Optophobia
by MuchFailSauce
Summary: "Outside the walls there is nothing." That's what they learned, anyway. But one group of teenagers tore that law apart until all that was left was one question: what's really out there? AU, chars four years older than canon. No pairings-yet-
1. Xenophobia

**Yes, _the _'village surrounded by walls that knows nothing of the outside world' fic! O_O _I had to do it. It was too much fun not to._**

**Disclaimer: I only sort of own this story. I didn't come up with the characters, or with the original world it is based off of. I am not a middle-aged Japanese guy. ^3^ Rock on, Kishimoto. **

**Fandom: Naruto  
**

**Characters: Everybody. But Shikamaru will probably end up being the most major, because he's smart.  
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**Warnings: There will be bits of language, mentions of violence, and other nasty thangs. Hmm...**** also, this doesn't have a set plot so there may be long breaks where I try to get a grip on what I'm going to do next, but other than that things should go pretty smoothly. **

** Other: Beta'd by the awesome AnotherGestapo, whose name is gotten by few. I sent her this and she'd _already drawn the characters._ O.o _It's like being psychic or something_. Always nice to have someone go through your crap and tell you what to change. XD And now... the story.  
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* * *

Outside of the walls, there was nothing.

Well, technically that wasn't true. Anyone who'd ever stood on the wall and looked in any direction could tell you that outside the compound there was an endless forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. Inside that forest were savages and beasts-insects ten or fifteen feet long and tigers that towered over the buildings of the Leaf. No one went outside except for the legendary ANBU, and they were nothing but gossip.

On the other hand, gossip was something to take seriously. Rumors were the one thing there was always plenty of, no matter what else was in short supply. Rumors that there were other communities out there. Rumors that people who went out and got captured were taken away by fiends in the shape of humans. Rumors that a huge plume of smoke and fire had gone up in the distance years ago, and since then people had been knocking at the gates of the compound and had been turned away.

...Not that it mattered. There was no civilization outside the compound, so anyone-or any_thing_-that came from the outside wasn't welcome anyway. Unless they could show their Allegiance tattoo and show that they were from the Leaf compound, there was no way they were coming inside.

Until _It_ happened.

Team 8 was on guard when It happened, and it was one in the morning. Kiba was on top of the parapet, legs dangling over the side, sixteen and fearless as he laughed at Hinata's concern. Shino was leaning against the side of one of the enormous trees that formed the wall's corners, his obsidian-coated eye-patch and single glasses-lens glinting as he watched his team and gave Kiba's giant dog warning looks. Hinata was standing next to Kiba, holding onto his arm with nervous hands as he laughed and knocked his heels against the wall. Akamaru was whining a bit as well and pressing his nose into the small of his master's back, nipping at his clothes.

"Hey!" Kiba stopped rocking all of a sudden, almost toppling forwards and making Hinata shriek in sudden fear. "Hey, Hinata, Shino! Look! There's someone down there, coming towards the gate."

Shino's face didn't show much emotion, but what did show looked a lot like suspicion. "Kiba, if you're lying again..."

"I'm not! Look! Four of them, right down there."

Hinata leaned over carefully, looking down where Kiba had pointed, then bit her lip and pressed her eyes tightly shut. When she opened them again, her eyes were a luminescent shade of silvery lavender and tiny, floating circles of light hovered a millimeter in front of her pupils like lenses.

"Oh! Shino, he's telling the truth! I think it's... three boys and a man? Or three teenage boys and their father? One of them is badly injured!"

"Do they have Allegiance?" Shino took a few steps forward and looked down, frowning enigmatically. "Can you see, Hinata?"

Hinata squinted, the light in front of her brightening for a second, then shook she her head. "No, I'm sorry. They seem to be wearing these odd... I don't know, some kind of tight clothing that cover almost their entire bodies, I can't see anything. Kiba?"

Kiba took a deep breath, leaning into the wind. "I smell blood. Infection. Something weird, like chemicals, and a lot of dirt..." He twitched a lip like a snarling dog, baring sharp canines at the alien scents. "Rocks. Sand. But barely, like they haven't been... wherever... in a long time. That's all I can get, from this far away."

Hinata gasped. "The man who was injured just collapsed! We have to get down there!"

"Hinata-!"

She was already gone. Shino cursed very, very quietly. Kiba cursed very, very loudly, and ran after his friend, Akamaru bounding at his heels as he took the steps two at a time. By the time he caught up with her, Hinata was standing next to the gate and arguing with Izumo and Kotetsu, the guards who always say on either side. The door, not opened since the destruction of the war sixteen years ago, looked strangely small against the enormity of the wall and the trees that formed its pillars. Distantly, as though heard through water, someone was pounding at the thick wood.

"Listen, there is someone out there, and I'm s-sorry, but if you just leave those boys to die I'm going to report you to the Hokage myself!"

Izumo started to respond, but before he could finish Kiba ran past him, kicked a stepladder up with one foot, and heaved the bar off of the door.

"Hey! Kid, you can't-!"

The gate swung open.

A man in a filthy, tattered shirt looked up at Kiba, half his face scarlet and black and white with infection, brilliant blood-red tattoos of spirals starting on his jaw and spinning up around his eye.  
"Help... them..." he rasped, and then his eye rolled up in his head and he collapsed onto his knees. Two of his three companions, starving-thin but supporting him anyway, bent double to hold his weight-a third, red-haired and shadow-eyed, stood in front of the door with his arms still raised to pound on it.

"Hey! Are you okay?" Kiba started, and then Kotetsu pulled him back roughly, standing between the second-degrees and the boys outside the door.

"Get back, Kiba. Some of the things outside the gates can look human, but for all you know these are about to pull off their skins and eat your face off! I said _get back_!"

"They're human!" Hinata insisted, with unusual force behind her normally refined voice. "Please, let them inside!"

"You don't know-"

"I do!" Hinata flashed her pale, glowing look at the guards, and they both stepped back a little.

"You're-?"

"Hinata. _Hyuuga_ Hinata," said Shino, and stepped forward, taking a firm hold on the shoulder of the taller boy on the left of the collapsed man. The boy gave him a long, uncomprehending look with fogged, unfocused eyes, then the fingertips of the Aburame's other hand touched his forehead and he crumpled forwards silently, eyes rolling up in his head. The other boy-a blond, fine boned and blue-eyed under a coating of muck and blood-whipped around as his companion fell, eyes opening wide, but he didn't cry out either. Even as he turned to look back at his opponents, ragged cloak spinning in the air behind him, the palm of Hinata's hand hit him in the ribs with a gentle _whud_. He fell without even a breath, leaving the redhead standing alone, hands still raised, a look of horror on his face.

The red-head backed away a step, then looked down at his three companions and took a faltering step forwards again, obviously torn between the urge to run and loyalty. He looked up at the Leaf shinobi, eyes wide, skeletal shoulders heaving, then reached up very slowly towards the back of his neck with trembling hands-

Kiba slammed the hilt of a kunai into his forehead.

"Kiba!"

"Sorry Hinata, but he might have been going for a weapon! They're from outside the wall, human or not!"

"Exactly," said Kotetsu. "Now, we have to take these four to the Intel division. You can come if you like, but _don't say anything_. Morino Ibiki makes the decisions in there, and he doesn't like it very much when people question his decisions."

* * *

"Morino, what the hell are these four doing in my basement?"

Morino Ibiki glared down at his younger colleague, eyes ominously shadowed by his black bandanna. "I would think that was obvious. They are here to be questioned."  
The boy yawned, deep and long, and opened one lazy black eye to look up at the towering figure of Leaf's greatest interrogation expert.

"I don't question, man. I thought that was a deal. Anyway, you said I was an incompetent."

"These prisoners wouldn't survive if I were to question them," said Ibiki in his deep, dangerous voice. "You have... gentler sensibilities than I when it comes to these cases."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying: Shikamaru, you're too much of a woman to handle torturing people so baby these guys until _I_ can torture them myself. Got it, loud and clear boss."

"You are an incorrigible brat, Nara."

"Thank you, troublesome boss. I try."

This little exchange was in Nara Shikamaru's basement, two hours after It happened. Shikamaru worked part-time under his sensei, Sarutobi Asuma, and part-time under Morino Ibiki, who paid more.

...And then, suddenly, there were four people locked up in his basement.

Granted, if he didn't want people locked up in his basement, he shouldn't have cells with one-way mirrors for windows built down there, but the fact that they were just put in there without his permission was still getting on his nerves. Anyway, those were built in there when he took the job of Ibiki's assistant, so it wasn't like he'd asked for them, exactly. They were just... a downside of the job.

Ibiki was gone. Just like that. It was annoying-not to mention slightly creepy-the way that man just came and went without saying anything or being seen at all. It was almost disturbing how quietly he could move, especially since he was more than six feet tall and wearing boots that were as heavy as lead. Rather than think about his boss, Shikamaru pitched himself forwards off of his couch, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands as he threw himself onto his feet with an effort. It was time to get himself acquainted with his new house guests.

The door opened behind him and Shikamaru swore quietly as the sound of Inuzuka Kiba's voice echoed sudden and loud around his peaceful basement, making the space behind his eyes fill with an agonizing, white-hot ringing noise and making his temples throb.

"-sayin', Hinata, that you're not supposed to get attached to people from the outside! That's trouble for _everyone_!"

"Kiba, they're sick, injured human beings, not animals! Th-they're just people who got lost in the woods, probably, and they should be treated well. Right..? I m-mean, if you had been frightened..." Hinata's voice, already low, softened even more. "If you had been lost and frightened and injured and turned away... wouldn't you want help?"

"Very poetic of you," said Shikamaru without turning around, and heard Hinata gasp and Kiba swear. Probably they hadn't even noticed him; people always told him he was good at blending in with the shadows-not being seen. "But Kiba is right. These people are not your concern, _Miss Hyuuga_. As much of a drag as it is, I'm supposed to be taking care of them until we can question them, and you're not allowed in."

"O-oh." Hinata looked downcast when he turned to look at her, and he suddenly realized how much like his boss he sounded. _Crap. This whole 'law enforcement' thing is really getting to my brain, huh? Snapping at girls like Ma told me not to..._

"Listen, Hinata," he started again, and pinched the bridge of his nose as a sudden headache hit him. "I... can let you stay. And watch. But you're probably not going to talk to them again."

"She never talked to them _before_." Kiba said, a little testily. "They didn't say anything, except for the old guy."

"They didn't have a chance to." Hinata murmured. "We knocked them out fairly quickly, and they were barely conscious."

"Whatever."

"You have to help though, if you're staying here." Shikamaru pointed a thumb over his shoulder at a heavy cabinet with a missing door. "Get some food out-instant ramen or something-and Kiba can get some fresh water from upstairs. You know where everything is?"

"Are you just using us to avoid working or what?" Kiba eyed the other boy suspiciously, and Shikamaru gave him a long, steady, irked glare in return.

"I have to go and wake them up, possibly under risk of my own injury or death. Go get the ramen, Inuzuka. Then we can lug my old stove out and make some dinner."

"Ramen..." Hinata murmured.

"Eh?"

"You... um... you may have other visitors soon," said Hinata hurriedly, as though afraid to say the words. "Um... maybe quite a few."

Shikamaru gave a heartfelt groan and paused with his hand on the first doorknob. "Visitors like _who_?" A horrible thought struck him. "This wasn't inspired by the mention of ramen, by any chance?"  
Hinata nodded, shame-faced. Shikamaru groaned again, slapping a hand to his forehead. "God, Hinata... Did you have to tell him? The world's loudest still-a-first-level and he's going to cram himself in my basement and mess with my work..." Another thought. "_Quite a few friends_? He's going to bring the entire village, isn't he?"

"Probably." Kiba drawled, and pressed his fingertips to the glass, looking in on the still-unconscious figures in Shikamaru's holding cells. "Hey, what's those things they're wearing? Look like aliens, don't they?"

The strangers did indeed look odd. All four were barefoot, and three of the four wearing ragged, filthy shirts with elbow-length sleeves and long, dark pants. The smallest of the lot-the redhead, lying very still indeed and pale in the fluorescent light-was shirtless, but his torso and arms were encased in a strange, skin-tight suit of some kind. Despite the grime the rest of their bodies had obviously been dragged through, the material of the long-sleeved skinsuit thing was perfectly clean and white, with two long red stripes down each arm. On the boy's left shoulder was a single small patch of darkness—some kind of three-digit code, but too small to read.

The whiteness of the fabric should have made the boy look pale in comparison. It didn't. He looked practically the same color, his closed eyes a pool of black where the deep shadow around them blended together.

"Shikamaru! Are you down there?"

"Shika, we're here to help!"

Shikamaru instinctively flicked a switch, turning the glass opaque, then saw who it was and relaxed. "Guys, you're supposed to use the front door. Otherwise I don't know you're coming. Ino, stop calling me that."

His best friend grinned apologetically, pocketing his copy of Shikamaru's key as he walked over to the comfortable couch and sat down. Yamanaka Ino pouted theatrically, then grinned and looked around, taking in the blacked-out windows and Shikamaru's hand on the doorknob. "I knew Mr. Morino would bring them to you! Kiba just came bursting into the training grounds and told us all they'd let someone in from the Outside, and that they'd handed them over to the questioners and _here they are_!" She reached past Shikamaru before he could object and flicked the switch again.

"Ino…"

"What? Oh yeah, confidential stuff, right? Sorry. Well, can't hurt now, right? Choji, come and see this!"

Shikamaru raised his eyebrows, but didn't bother objecting further. Four years since their graduation from the academy, and even at sixteen Ino still hadn't learned to take a hint.

"They look very… harmless." Choji squinted through the glass, his wide, kind face twisted up in concern. "Are you taking care of them? I can make some food." He looked closer and his brow furrowed. "What are they wearing?"

"Dunno." Shikamaru yawned again and checked his clock. 3:30 in the morning. _Way _too early for everyone to have been in the training grounds together. Hopefully everyone in the village wasn't going to show up, this wouldn't be too bad, and he could get through with minimal security breaches. "Breakfast would be great. For all of us?"

Choji smiled—Shikamaru knew for a fact that his friend loved to cook for big groups even more than he loved to cook for himself—and bustled off to take the cheap microwave ramen professionally out of Kiba's unresisting hands.

"Can we go in?" Ino asked, and tapped on the glass with a fingernail.

"No."

"Awww… Come on, Shika… Please?"

"No is no, Ino."

"Tch. You're no fun now that you work for Mr. Morino. I could help, you know. I'm a nurse. And I have… other talents that could be useful."

Shikamaru opened his mouth to say 'no' again, more loudly this time, then hesitated. Ino's talents were some of the strongest in the compound and her mind-reading stall was making her wealthy at a startling rate; maybe there was actually some benefit to letting her in.

"Fine. But I'm going in first, and you're going to _not touch anything_."

"Okay, okay. I know... they're dangerous face-ripping shape-shifters from the outside. Let the big, brave ninja protect you, little kunoichi…"

Shikamaru pressed his thumb to the door handle, feeding chakra into it until it clicked open quietly. "Oh stop, troublesome girl. I'm qualified and you aren't. Be glad I'm even letting you in with me."

The door clicked shut behind them, cutting off the sound from outside like the world beyond the door didn't exist. Ino took in the room with wide, curious eyes, running a finger over the edge of the sink bowl and looking around at the blank, white walls.

"It's not a very nice place to wake up," she said finally, and picked up the rag draped over the edge of the sink. "He's filthy, isn't he?"

Shikamaru didn't object as Ino wet the rag, or as she walked forwards. But when she reached out to wipe the red-head's forehead, his hand whipped out in a blur and caught her by the wrist.

"No _touching_, Ino! I know we're the same rank, and you're a friend and everything, but I'm in charge here. And Ibiki will have my hide if you wake him up and he sucks your soul out or something."

"Okay then," said Ino, "You do it. I can't examine him if he's covered in mud and blood, especially if I don't know whether it's his blood or not. Somebody has to clean him up."

Shikamaru hesitated for a moment, his gaze flickering from the unconscious boy on the bed to his friend, then he rolled his eyes and let go. "Fine. But the second he wakes up, step back."

Ino saluted. "You got it, Mr. Nara!"

"Oh shut up."

The boy didn't wake or stir for a long half-minute after the wet rag first touched his face. Then, as Ino wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, a slit of white appeared in the dark, sunken skin around his eyes. Instantly, Shikamaru pulled Ino behind him and flicked a knife out of its holster on his hip, watching the prisoner with sharp, hooded black eyes.

"Show your Allegiance, stranger," Shikamaru said, in the cold, emotionless drawl that always made Ino shiver. "Tell me you're human, or I'm going to assume that you aren't."

The boy looked around, then touched his cheek where Ino had scrubbed off the worst of the grime and looked up at the two, question in his eyes. But still he didn't speak.

"Allegiance?" Shikamaru repeated, and pulled down the cloth wrapped around his bicep, showing the leaf tattoo imprinted darkly on his skin. The boy's face showed confusion, then understanding, then he reached down and scrabbled at the front of the white, long-sleeved shirt.

There was a sharp ripping as the red-head's nails caught on the cloth, and he tugged weakly at the tiny tear, then looked up at the pair of them with big, pleading blue-green eyes.

"Put your hands on your head," said Shikamaru, and the boy did as he was told immediately, watching with apprehension as Shikamaru bent down and wormed the knife under the skin-tight, waxy cloth.

"There's something under there all right," said Ino, excitement in her voice, and she bent down next to Shikamaru, smiling reassuringly at the skinny red-head. "Can you see what it is?"

The cloth gave way, exposing a pale, bony chest and a single, dark red symbol impressed into the skin like a brand.

The corner of the boy's mouth twitched upwards into something that might almost have been a smile of relief. He reached out a hand slowly and pointed to Shikamaru's arm, then pulled aside the scraps of fabric and traced the symbol with a fingertip.

"Shikamaru, I think that's… his Allegiance." Ino whispered. "But it's not like ours; it's… what is that? An hourglass?"

Shikamaru nodded absentmindedly, looking more awake than his teammate had seen him in years. "That's not Leaf. I think… I think…"

The boy clapped his hands once—a quiet, polite, 'I don't want to disturb you' kind of clap, then lifted a cupped hand to his mouth and tipped it back, then pointed to the sink. Ino held up a finger and mouthed _one second_, then turned back to Shikamaru.

"He doesn't look dangerous. Can't we let him walk around a bit, or at least get a drink?"

"Sure," Shikamaru muttered. "We're leaving procedure in pieces anyway; I can't get any more in trouble than I'll be in already."

"Sure, go get a drink," said Ino kindly, and the boy gave a polite little nod and slid his feet off the low bed he'd been placed on, joints cracking audibly as he rolled his head and flexed his fingers. He sat still for a second, breathing deeply, then pushed himself up with a visible effort, staggering forwards on trembling legs until he hit the wall palms-first.

"We're bringing in some food soon," said Ino, and lunged forwards, catching the boy's arm as he started to fall forwards.

It was as though her hands were red-hot. The boy jerked away from her so fast and hard that he fell on his back, barely catching himself on one elbow before his head could slam into the hard floor. Ino shrieked in surprise and Shikamaru made a few lightning-quick gestures with his hands—

Silence fell.

"Shadow Bind successful." Shikamaru lowered his hands and got up off his knees, pulling the outsider boy up with him as though the two were connected by invisible threads. "What is _wrong _with you?"

The boy shook his head and made a flurry of fast, desperate gestures, then shook his head and ran his hands over his close-cropped red hair in a gesture of complete frustration.

Someone knocked on the door, in a rhythm that Shikamaru had been hearing since his first day in the academy.

"Choji is here with the food," Ino said, more for the boy's benefit than Shikamaru's. "We should go and make sure that your friends—your brothers, right? We should make sure they're awake to eat."

The boy's nonexistent brows wrinkled, but Shikamaru was already leaving as he raised a hand to get the other boy's attention.

The second outsider was already awake when they came in, but only for a certain level of 'awake'. One of his eyes was open, but it was empty and unfocused, staring at the opposite wall. The other hooded to a thin slit and the eyeball itself was bloodshot, it's iris a blind whitish-grey. He didn't look around when the door opened, and Shikamaru waved his hand in front of him without even a twitch of response.

The junior interrogator frowned, then turned around and stuck his head out the door. "Hey, Inuzuka, Hyuuga, Aburame. Who knocked out the one with brown hair?"

Shino nodded deeply, and Shikamaru made a sharp gesture for him to come in. "I need you to un-sting him. That's what you did, right? Drugged him?"

Shino stalked in and straight past Ino, pressing a hand flat against the boy's forehead with practiced ease.

"He will wake up within five minutes." He turned on his heel and headed back towards the door, coat whipping behind him, then paused halfway through. "I notice you said my name last, master Nara."

Shikamaru rubbed his temples again. "Yes, I did. Sorry, okay? Someone's name had to come last."

Shino didn't deign to answer, just clicked the door shut behind him.

"The Aburame family is always like that," said Ino comfortingly, "he'll get over it eventually. Maybe."

"That makes my headache _so_ much better," muttered Shikamaru. "Any other pieces of joy to share?"

"Well, this one probably won't be mute like the last one," chirped Ino. "Come on, let's go!"

She walked around the bed in the middle of the room, looking the boy up and down quizzically.

"He's gotta be older than us, right? Older than the other kid, too. And he's a mess."

"Honestly, I don't care. Clean him up," Shikamaru ran a finger over the white fabric on the boy's shoulder, scratching a fingernail over the waxy, soft cloth. "Look at this. '002'. Why the numbers?"

"Who knows?" Ino rubbed a hand over the thin fuzz of hair still left on the boy's head, then hesitated and glanced at Shikamaru. "I can… take a look inside. If you'd like. When he wakes up, he might not want to talk to us."

"Ino."

"What?" Ino turned, grinning, "I love feeling hair this short, it's—"

"_Ino_. Stop talking."

"So I _should_ look at-?"

The outsider smacked her hand away from his head and scrambled up to crouch on the bed as far from the two Leaf ninja as possible. His good eye darted around the room, from the mirror on the wall to the sink in the corner, and then settled on Shikamaru and Ino, standing by the foot of his bed.

"Hi?" said Ino cautiously, and turned slightly pink at the look he gave her—a look that very clearly said '_what the hell was _that_?'_ "Sorry. You… uh… you have nice… hair?"

He stared at her for another long second, faintly incredulous, then turned to look Shikamaru warily up and down.

Shikamaru looked back at him, waiting for the inevitable questions. None were forthcoming, and after almost thirty seconds of that one-eyed glare he rolled his eyes and quietly stowed the kunai he'd been holding back in its pouch.

"Let me guess. You can't talk either? Jeez, you guys are the most troublesome prisoners I've ever seen."

The outsider made a rude hand gesture. Behind Shikamaru Ino sniggered audibly.

"So you can't talk?" the blond asked, after Shikamaru finally stopped glaring at her and she finally stopped laughing. "Like that guy in the other room? Is he your brother?"

The boy frowned, opened his mouth, then closed it again. His frown deepened and then he turned away, his face tight and upset.

"I don't think he's going to do anything," whispered Ino, and tugged on Shikamaru's sleeve. "Let's go."

"One sec." Shikamaru pulled off the cloth on his arm again and grabbed the outsider by the shoulder. "Hey. I need to see your Allegiance."

The boy looked at Shikamaru, then at the tattoo on his arm, then nodded, turned his back again and tapped the nape of his neck. Shikamaru held up the kunai and started forwards, but the outsider jerked back around and shook his head violently.

"What, we're just supposed to trust you?" Shikamaru met the boy's mismatched gaze and rolled his eyes. "Fine… but this isn't done. There'll be food in here in a few minutes."

Choji was coming out of the first cell as Ino and Shikamaru came out of the second, a tray of steaming plates on his arm.

"He's eating like there's no tomorrow," smiled Choji, "They really are starving. I wonder how long they were out there."

"I'd ask them if I could," Shikamaru said, and glanced at the clock. 3:52. Naruto was sitting on his couch, mercifully distracted from the cell doors by Lee and Sakura on either side of him, and the smell of cooking food had filled Shikamaru's slightly musty-smelling basement.

"Why can't you ask them?"

"Because two out of four so far are mute," said Shikamaru, and looked at the third door reluctantly. "Who's in this one?"

"The blonde one." A girl walked up behind Choji, another tray on her arms, flipping her bangs out of her eyes. "Hello, Shikamaru."

"Tenten," the boy acknowledged. "I just hope he's not as taciturn as his brothers. The one in the middle is the troublesome one. Don't try to talk to him."

Ino pulled at Shikamaru's arm. "Come on, before he wakes up!"

"Yeah, yeah. Stop tugging on me, woman! It's too early in the morning for this…"

Shikamaru clicked the door open, caught a split-second glimpse of the room beyond and, on instinct, ducked. A fist hit the door above his head with a dull clang and a blur of short, blond hair and wide, dark blue-green eyes. Then Ino dived past him and both she and Shikamaru's assailant hit the ground with a heavy _thud_.

"Ino!"

"I'm okay!" Ino yelled, and wrestled an arm across the blond outsider's throat, using the other to form a few hurried signs in the air in front of her. There was a jolt through the air like a silent shockwave, and then, with startling suddenness, both bodies went completely and utterly still.

"Ino? Hey! Did it work?"

"Still okay," muttered a voice, but it didn't come from Ino's body.

Shikamaru crouched down next to the invader boy and rolled his friend's limp body carefully away, laying it on its back nearby before leaning down and offering the outsider body a hand.

"Hear anything?"

Ino took the proffered hand and pulled herself up with difficulty, stretching the unfamiliar muscles and wincing as her back cracked and popped. Then she looked down at herself and, to Shikamaru's annoyance, started to laugh again.

"What's wrong _now_, Ino?"

"This isn't a _boy_," Ino giggled, and reached down, stripping off her mud-encrusted, overlarge shirt to reveal the bodysuit underneath. "Shika, did you even bother to look? She's a _girl_! I would think you would know the difference by now!"

Shikamaru scowled automatically, then absorbed what the psychic said and did a double take. "_she_… what?"

Ino laughed in delight, flexing her white-clothed arms and feeling her protruding ribs. "Jeez, she could beat you up! She's so skinny, but look at her arms—"

"I barely saw her, and she has really short hair." Shikamaru snapped, ignoring the flush that was spreading over his face. "Just tell her we're not going to hurt her so she doesn't try to kill me or anything. Tell her we're bringing food."

The girl's face went blank as Ino turned her mind inwards. Her mouth moved silently, and then, finally, she raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "She's talking… kind of… in her head, anyway. She's very… um… loud.""—_done with my brothers you son of—_""Sorry. I guess she _can_ talk.""—_get out of my head and I'll talk on my—_"

"If you'll sit down and stay calm, Ino can get out of your head," said Shikamaru loudly, cutting over the schizophrenic chatter, "Deal?"

Ino shook her head sharply as though to clear an annoying noise out of her ears, then nodded hesitantly. "She says sure, but you have to tell her where the boys she came with are."

"Deal."

On the floor, Ino's real body stirred heavily and groaned. A second later, the blond-haired girl sat straight up and unleashed a stream of profanity so fast and loud it might as well have been one long word.

"—son of a _bitch_!" She finished, and then took a deep breath and met Shikamaru's gaze with her own as though challenging him to yell back. "Well? Where are they?"

Shikamaru blinked once or twice.

"…In the next rooms over," he said finally, and then: "You sound like a man."

Ino winced, but it was too late to take the words back. Even after all his time living with Mrs. Nara and his amazing I.Q., Shikamaru still didn't seem to realize what he could and couldn't say to girls. Pity he'd never dated anyone—getting slapped a few times might really help.

"I 'sound like a man' because I haven't talked," said the girl, cold and low, her voice carefully controlled. "—for almost a month. My little brother can barely walk since we escaped, my other brother almost starved to death keeping him alive, my father is _missing half his face_, and if you don't show me where they are God help me I will _tear you limb from limb_!"

Shikamaru was leaning away from her by now, hands raised in readiness to form a hand seal as she advanced on him, voice rising in volume as she came. "Listen, troublesome screaming woman! All we've done to your brothers is clean them up a bit and give them food. There's a doctor in for your old man, the best one in the compound. Honestly, can you stop yelling at me?"

"Why are we locked up?" The girl demanded, and gestured violently at the mirrored window. "How many people are watching us right now? You guys going to use us like they—"

Ino cut her off sharply, eyes wide. "Where are you _from_? We're not going to do anything with you! We just need to know about what happened to you—where you're from!"

"After I talk to my brothers," said the girl sharply. "I need to talk to them."

"You can't _talk _to them," Shikamaru snapped back, equally sharp and acidic. "In case you didn't notice, _they can't talk_. Or were they holding out on us? They have to stay in custody until I know I have the truth."

"My brothers can't talk."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Let's put it this way," said the girl, and Shikamaru tensed slightly at the sudden, forced calmness of her voice. "While we were out in the forest, a snake the size of a tree hit me so hard I was unconscious for almost three weeks and when I woke up, my little brother almost cried for the first time in five years; he was sure I'd died. But neither of them said a word. Don't waste your time, _troublesome little boy_. They can't talk to me. And even if they could, they wouldn't talk to _you_."

Shikamaru stared at her for a second, neutral and expressionless, and then he turned his back without a word and walked to the door. Ino rushed after him, throwing glances over her shoulder, then pulled herself out on his heels, already whispering.

"Shikamaru, we have to let—"

"What the crap was that?"

"Shikamaru, what happened?"

"Sh-shikamaru, what happened in there? Miss Ino—"

"I told you, Hinata, they're outsiders! You shouldn't have let them in!"

"Master Nara is fine. I would worry more about whether or not miss Yamanaka has overused her abilities."

"Na, na, Shikamaru! _What the crap was_—"

"Shut up!"

The crowd of people around the genius pulled back in unison, leaving him to stand alone in a wide circle of shocked faces. It was extremely unusual to see Shikamaru worked up at all, and almost nobody in the entire village had ever heard him yell. Choji, standing at the front of the line, gave Shikamaru a concerned look and jerked his head towards the door, raising his eyebrows. Shikamaru gave a tiny nod, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and taking a deep breath. "What time is it? Please tell me it's before five so I don't have to go to work. And that I have breakfast ready. Please."

"Breakfast has been arranged," said Shino coolly, "and I have a message from Master Morino,"

"Go," muttered Shikamaru, and gratefully accepted a bowl from his best friend, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder. "Don't talk to her. She'll scream at you, but don't talk to her anyway." Choji nodded and opened the door, slipping inside with unusual grace for his size.

"Master Morino wishes to inform you that you are not needed at work today," Shino said, slightly louder than was necessary. "He says that you are granted as much leave as is necessary to rehabilitate the prisoners and find out their place of origin. If they have talents, they must be recorded."

Behind Shino, Uzumaki Naruto had his face pressed to the glass and was watching the scene inside the cell with avid interest. Kiba shouldered him aside to watch as well, and a loud and violent scuffle broke out as Shikamaru pulled himself over to his couch. Tenten scooted over as the genius slumped down into the worn cushions and Lee ceased his one-armed pushups in order to move out of the way, smiling his million-watt smile.

"How long have you been up, Shikamaru?" asked Hinata in her smooth, gentle voice, and a soft glow flickered over her eyes for a split second as she looked at him. "Your chakra flow is erratic, are you… are you okay? The girl in the third room—"

"Fine," Shikamaru mumbled, and took a big slurp of ramen to avoid answering any other questions. Hinata dipped her head immediately, embarrassed, and glanced at the windows across the basement.

"The man… the tattooed man… do you need to go and talk to him? Or is that not…"

Shikamaru gulped hard to get his ramen down and almost choked. "He's with the doctor," he said, and coughed, hard. "He's going to have some nasty scars though. Half his face is almost gone."

Hinata's hand crept up in front of her face in horror and shock—an old habit from her years of crippling shyness. "O-oh."

"He'll heal."

"I wonder where they came from," Lee declared, switching arms, "_231_." He didn't even sound out of breath. "They seem very angry, especially that young woman. Perhaps we should ask teacher Gai to come in and speak to them! He would certainly make them—"

"Mute _and_ deaf?" Shikamaru cut in, a little acerbically, and tugged his blanket out from behind Tenten. "Is it too much for me to ask if I ask you all to clear out of my basement? I woke up at two in the morning to deal with this crap."

"Shika, you're being hurtful," Ino complained teasingly, and threw herself down on the Nara's knees with a toss of her luxurious blond hair, ignoring his grunt of pain. "Oh, don't complain."

"Bothersome wench."

"Lazy stick-in-the-mud."

"Well, I would certainly be willing to head home," said Tenten, and pulled herself to her feet, letting Ino spill off of Shikamaru's shins and onto the newly vacated cushions. "I've been up almost as long as you have for Sensei's early morning training OF YOUTH." She grimaced a little, then reached down and tugged at Lee's shoulder. "Come on, Lee. You can crash at my place until dawn if you'd like. Then we can go out and find Sensei. Okay?"

"One moment please! _ 498, 499, 500_! Alright, let us go!" Then what Tenten had said seemed to register and Lee turned slightly pink. "But Tenten, I could not stay at your house! We would be alone, and that would be improper! Far better that I devote the hours of dawn to training instead, and then meet with you at the training grounds."

Tenten sighed as though this was a long-fought battle and the two of them headed off towards the door, arguing good-naturedly about the morals of teammates sharing an empty penthouse. Shikamaru watched them go, then turned his mind to strategy, looking over the remaining intruders in his basement. _Hm…_

"Hinata," he said, "Shouldn't Kiba be getting more sleep as well? He's always taking double-shifts, after all. Guy can't be getting much more sleep than I do."

He saw Hinata's eyes widen in concern, and inwardly rejoiced. _Jackpot…_

"He is? I thought we were scheduled together because we worked under the same sensei…"

"I have access to records and schedules," Shikamaru explained, forcing a touch of unnatural, genuine-sounding concern into his voice. "He was scheduled for the morning shift, but volunteered to work night shifts as well so he could work with his team. I thought you knew."

Hinata gave a jerky little bow of thanks and stood, hurrying over to where Kiba was scuffling on the floor with Akamaru and Naruto. Shikamaru saw words exchanged, and then Kiba nodded, a little shamefaced, scratching the nape of his neck uncomfortably. Hinata smiled and shook her head, then made a timid suggestion and pointed towards the door. Shino falling in behind them, team 8 headed up the stairs and out of sight, leaving… Naruto. Ino. And Choji, but Choji was _quiet_.

There were some times when subtle strategy was just _not going to work_. Shikamaru stood up, walked over to Naruto, and said "Uzumaki, get out of my basement."

Naruto looked slightly affronted. "Hey, I—"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and dug in his pocket for the fail-safe 'Naruto removal' gear he'd learned to keep with him at all times.

"Listen," he said, and held up the little square of paper. "Three days of free all-you-can-eat ramen at the Ichiraku, okay? Just get out so I can sleep."

"Sweet!"

Naruto bounded up the stairs two at a time, practically singing under his breath, the coupon vanishing into some secret pocket of his bright orange jacket. Shikamaru allowed himself a smirk and slunk over to the couch where Ino was watching the proceedings with a smile on her face.

"That was fast."

"I know some tricks for most of them," Shikamaru admitted, and threw himself down next to his friend, grabbing his pillow off the ground where Lee had accidentally thrown it with one of his huge, sweeping gestures. "Sucks though."

"What?"

"Didn't want to use up that thing about Kiba's double shifts." The genius grimaced, checking his roll of Ichiraku coupons and shoving them back into his pocket. "Just wanted them out quickly, I guess. I'll have to dig up some new stuff on team 8 tomorrow…"

"If you have time," Ino pointed out. Across the room Choji came out of the last door with the sound of a loud, hoarse voice trailing behind him, then closed it quickly and breathed a silent sigh of relief. He didn't seem surprised to see the empty room at all; he just padded over to settle in the middle of the couch between his friends.

"You have to take care of them, don't you? Or else you'll lose your job, you know you will. Mr. Morino has a very low tolerance for 'too troublesome, get someone else to do it.'" Ino rolled her eyes. "I should know."

"You got fired because you couldn't use your mind-transfer fast enough," Shikamaru muttered, and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. "You could re-apply now."

"I don't want to," Ino sniffed, and smiled mischievously. "I'll just sit here and watch you stew over your 12-hour workday and bad pay."

"You should let them share a room," Choji said, very quietly. Shikamaru rolled over just enough to fix his friend with a single hooded, black eye, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"That's against the rules."

"They can't even stand properly," Choji pointed out. "This basement is the most secure room in the village, isn't that what you said?"

"A whole crowd of people just got in." Ino looked dubiously across the room at the still-open door. "How secure can this place possibly be?"

"It wasn't locked down," Shikamaru said slowly and propped himself up on his elbows, eyes darting around the room, analyzing and considering. "When I set it up right, this place is on a par with the Hokage palace."

Ino glared at the two of them. "How is it that I'm the only one who doesn't know this?"

Choji smiled at her, his eyes crinkling up with amusement at her exasperated expression. "Shikamaru talks a lot when he's tired and full."

"I would have nowhere to get away from the screaming woman," Shikamaru said thoughtfully, "—but she might not scream as much."

"You would have to stay locked up in your basement, though!" Ino looked around at the musty basement, dimly lit by a few old, second-hand lamps, then shook her head. "What would you _do_ all day?"

"Sleep." Shikamaru smirked at her. "Believe me, Ino, life is way too much trouble for me, and responsibility is a drag. Staying locked up down here for pay is like a dream come true."

"I'll bring you down food."

"Choji, I can't believe you're going along with this! Your best friend is about to lock himself in a basement with four people who might be homicidal maniacs!"

"Shikamaru's smart." Choji took a bowl of his ramen, completely unconcerned. "He was the first one to graduate, remember? He'll be fine."

"Well, I'm going to get out of here then," Ino snapped. "_I_ certainly don't want to get shut up down here."

Shikamaru gave a half-hearted little wave from his couch, then flinched as Ino's last words echoed down the stairs.

"_If you die, I'm going to kill you!_"

Silence fell. Choji ate ramen. Shikamaru dozed.

"Shikamaru?"

"_Ngh._"

"Thanks."

"_Ghf._"

"You need to get up and do stuff, you know."

Shikamaru hauled himself up just far enough to turn on his side, then, wordlessly, stuck a hand out. Choji grinned and stood, pulling his thinner, lighter friend up with no discernible effort.

"I'll go, okay? And I'll tell Mrs. Nara where you are."

Shikamaru sighed and gave a jerky nod, sidling over to a circuit-board on the wall next to the door and flipping it open to stare at the switches inside. By the time the creaking of Choji's footsteps vanished a quiet hum of power had started in the still air, draining the old light bulbs and making them flicker. Then there was a heavy _thud_ and a series of metallic clicks from the stairs beyond the door, and the whir stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Shikamaru turned like a man facing his execution and stared at the doors, considering each one in turn. After a long second, he nodded decisively and headed towards the first door.

The red-head was standing shakily in front of the sink when he came in, his hands and face dripping with water. He flinched at the sound of the door opening, the rag dropping from his trembling hand into a sink that would almost certainly be stained a murky reddish-brown when he was done with it.

"I've been thinking about it," Shikamaru said, slowly, with very convincing slight uncertainty in his voice that was overlaid with genuine fake hesitancy, "and I don't really see the point in keeping you separated. I'm planning on letting your brother and sister out, and-"

The boy's face didn't exactly 'light up', but the eyes widened ever-so-slightly in pleased surprise, and the thin, chapped lips curved at the corners. He nodded once with suppressed eagerness, and hobbled a step towards the door. Shikamaru cleared his throat loudly.

"_But..._ I have to warn you, if you attempt to leave the premises, I'll have to treat you as enemies. And that would suck, because it's too early for that. So don't do anything troublesome, okay?"

The boy nodded, then bowed with a politeness that might or might not have been fake and gestured courteously towards the door. The genius gave him one more long, skeptical look, and then he turned the handle and led the way into the warm darkness of the room beyond.

* * *

**I got an email after my beta read the first part I sent them, and it said: "Hey, is Temari male in this canon?" I thought it would be interesting if they didn't notice her gender first thing, because I read that people who have been starving for a long time often don't show signs of puberty or physical maturity-and they've been starving for a _long_ time. :( Next chapter, we may get some backstory for the mysterious outsiders (fighting the urge to capitalize that word all the way through. If I accidentally did, please let me know XD) and I'm sure Ino will make sure the news gets to everybody in the rookies that didn't hear it already. Reviews, especially if you have a cool new way to adapt a character-this world seems much closer to magic than I thought-would be lovely!**

** See you next time, Space Cowboy.  
**


	2. Mnemophobia

**Chapter 2! It has lotsa dialogue in it! . I don't like doing that. It feels repetitive. Anyway... we get backstory! And we figure out why Temari is the only one who talks, so that's good. **

**Fandom: Naruto  
**

**Characters: As previous. Mostly Shikamaru and Temari in this one.  
**

**Warnings: There will _still_ be bits of language, mentions of violence, and other nasty thangs. Also, evil villian-dude is evil. In rather nasty, slimy ways****. **

** Other: Temari really does mood-swing a lot in this chapter. O.O Maybe she's hormonal or something. Hm... that might be fun. Also, Kankuro is a moron. And Gaara tries to let him know and fails. Having two characters mute makes it _so much harder to communicate things._ Ah well... yet again, many thanks to AnotherGestapo. Much love, dudette. **

**

* * *

**

After the first of his unwelcome guests was outside and sitting, small and unobtrusive, on his personal couch, Shikamaru stood in front of the remaining two doors and considered his dilemma.

"Your brother doesn't like me," he mused, only half-addressing the boy huddled on his favorite pillow. "...but your sister downright _hates_ me, and she's _loud_, too. I dunno what your old man is like, but he's probably not awake yet because they knocked him out to fix his face..." His eyes fell on the third door again, and he shuddered slightly. "No. She can come out last, the troublesome woman. Maybe then she won't kill me for not letting both of you out yet..."

A hand tugged gently on his sleeve, soft but startlingly sudden. Shikamaru whipped around and came face to face with a pair of wide, sunken, darkly-shadowed eyes surrounded by paper-white skin. The other boy backed away instantly, raising his hands in a gesture of peace as the Nara's hand slowly dropped away from his kunai pouch.

"_What_?" Shikamaru inquired, a little more impatiently than was strictly necessary. "Do you need something?"

The mute made a few gestures, then looked at Shikamaru's sleepy, uncomprehending face and stopped, looking thoughtful. He pointed at the door, and then at his own throat, then covered his mouth with one hand and shook his head. Shikamaru watched this display with hooded eyes just a little bit unfocused, then something seemed to click and he raised his eyebrows slightly, skeptical.

"Yeah, he can't talk. I know. But that doesn't mean I need you to come in with me either, because your sister says that _you_ can't talk either. What good are _you_ gonna do me?"

The kid gestured to the door again and screwed up his face into what was actually a fair approximation of his brother's one-eyed glare, then he pressed his palm to his own chest and held his hands out in the 'peace' gesture again.

"So you're saying you can make him stop glaring at me like a complete-" Shikamaru caught the expression on the other boy's face and sighed, cutting off the words before they could come out. "Fine, fine. Sure, you can come in. But try anything, and there's a whole village of people outside who are totally gonna kill you. I'm the nicest guy you're going to get here, so be grateful _I'm_ doing it instead of my boss and don't give me any grief. Clear?"

The kid considered this news for a second, head slightly tilted at a contemplative angle, then nodded.

"Good."

When the door opened the second time, the brown-haired boy was trying doggedly to dig his fingernails under the collar of his white shirt and failing. He turned around with a ferocious scowl on his face when he heard the door open, and then he caught sight of his brother and froze, his eye wide.

"You're welcome." Shikamaru said preemptively, and pointedly stepped away from the still-open door. "You're allowed out into the basement now. Lucky you. Don't do anything stupid."

The two boys weren't listening. Instead, there appeared to be a silent argument going on in a flurry of fast hand gestures, getting 'louder' and more violent as the thin red-head started to shake his head vehemently, a wrinkle growing between his non-existent eyebrows as his brother ignored whatever it was he was saying.

Suddenly, finally, the smaller outsider made an authoritative slashing motion with one hand, his normally emotionless face twisted into a scowl. Immediately his brother dropped his hands to his sides, bending his head slightly in what was unmistakeably a bow.

Shikamaru didn't let anything show on his face, but his mind, so recently settled into a sleep-deprived fuzz of inactivity, started racing again in an instant. Why were they arguing, and how long would it take him to decipher the sign language that they obviously shared? And why in the world would the emaciated, hollow-cheeked younger brother have the authority and power to force compliance on his big brother with a single motion of his hand...? It was way too early for this.

"You two want to come in and talk to your sister?" Shikamaru grimaced at the wall, imagining-with the small part of his mind not wildly theorizing-the welcome that awaited him in the room on the other side of it and trying to keep the note of hope out of his voice. "She's freaked out about you guys. If I go in alone, she'll chew my face off."

The older boy, chagrined but still glaring at the Nara, made a hoarse noise that might have been a laugh and nodded his head. Shikamaru glared back at him, making sure his eyes were still hooded, un-focusing them slightly, slowing his movements as he turned back to the door and sidled out into his basement again. Behind him bed-springs creaked and there was a set of heavy footsteps to mask the almost-inaudible _tap tap _of the red-head's own gentle tread. It was a bit freaky; the boy was so quiet, even when you knew he was there, that he could probably even give Mr. Morino a run for his money.

The third door took no small amount of courage to open, but when it did, the genius didn't go in immediately. In fact, he was standing behind the door when the blond girl edged out, her hands fisted and raised to chest height as though she was expecting to be ambushed at any moment. Shikamaru stood very still, watching, counting on his much-commented-on ability to be unseen to conceal him in the shadows of the door as the outsider turned slowly in a circle to take in the wide, low-roofed room she now inhabited. And then she saw her brothers.  
The Nara didn't get to see her expression, but he saw the jolt that ran through her.

She didn't stop to worry about where her captor was. She didn't bother to check the room for traps or enemies. She just stepped forward, reaching out with trembling hands, and pulled her brothers close to her. They stayed that way, silent and motionless, for less than five seconds. Then the girl let go and ran a hand over the thin layer of blond stubble on her scalp, shaking her head and taking a step back to look the two boys over.

"You're both fine."

The red-head nodded, then mimed a series of quick actions. _I cleaned my face, too_, Shikamaru approximated subconsciously, and narrowed his eyes, squinting through the dim light of the basement as the other boy-_clearly taller than the other two, he could see that now that they were all in one place... the oldest, maybe? But he didn't really act like it..._-said something long and complicated in a lengthy string of motions. Then he reached up to his arm and touched his shoulder, exactly where Shikamaru had shown his own Allegiance tattoo.

"I see," said the girl evenly, and shook her head. "And where is he now?"

The red-head hesitated for half a second, his light, piercing eyes darting around the room, then raised an arm and pointed straight toward Shikamaru's shadowed form. All three heads turned towards him, expressions ranging from impassivity with a hint of interest to suspicion and dislike to wary mistrust. The girl took a step forward, whether by design or instinct, standing in front of her brothers as though to shield them from him.

"I suppose we should thank you," she said, with no pretense of thankfulness in her voice.

"Yeah, but you won't," Shikamaru drawled. He walked past the small group to the fourth door, making no sudden movements, like he was edging around a wild animal. He opened the door, pulling it wide, then stepped back. "Go on. He's your dad, right? Don't wake him up, or the healers'll have my skin."

The girl looked at him with shrewd, sharp blue eyes, then glanced back at her brothers and jerked her head toward the door. The brown-haired one started forward immediately, the red-head taking half a second to squeeze his sister's shoulder comfortingly before following and vanishing into the brightly-lit room beyond the door.

Shikamaru stood there by the door, listening to the hum of the dim light-bulbs, and refused to meet the outsider's eyes as she stared at him.

"You have no reason to be this charitable," she said finally, breaking the the tense silence with a suddenness that almost made him jump. "I'm looking for you ulterior motive and I can't find it. Unless you have some kind of fetish for starved girls with shaved heads, in which case you can stick your charity up your-"

"Hey, there's no need for that," Shikamaru interrupted, and threw himself backwards onto his couch. "I have to do my job, and my job is to take care of you guys. Figure if I don't let you all out you'll just make my life hell anyway, 'cause you remind me of my mom." There were a few seconds of silence as the outsider absorbed this and Shikamaru lay on the couch in a sprawl. Then he glanced over at the far wall near the stairs and gave a heartfelt groan. "Damn. Hey, troublesome woman, I need to know the time and it's too much of a drag to get up myself. Throw me my alarm clock."

"No," said the girl immediately, "And my name isn't 'Troublesome woman', either. Get it yourself."

Shikamaru cracked one eye open to give her a muzzily annoyed look. "You didn't _tell_ me your name, wo-_outsider_. How am I supposed to call you by name if I don't know what it is?"

"Temari," snapped the girl. "Okay? Now stop giving me stupid nicknames."

"...Temari."

"Yeah." she glared at him as though daring him to challenge her. "Temari."

"..._what_ Temari?"

The girl stared at him as though this was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. "What are you talking about?"

Shikamaru sighed heavily and glanced over at his fallen alarm clock again as though hoping it would have moved since the last time he saw it. "Troublesome woman... what's your _family _name? Y'know... I'm _Nara_ Shikamaru, and my old man is _Nara_ Shikaku. I bought this basement from _Morino_ Ibiki. Your family name."

"Where I come from, we don't have those," Temari said sharply, obviously stung, "and don't _patronize_ me, Nari or Naru or whatever your name-"

"Na_ra_," Shikamaru muttered. "It's kind of important. Get it right."

"I don't care."

"Well, I'm not answering to the wrong name, and we're going to be spending an awful lot of time in this room together. Get used to it." Temari opened her mouth angrily, but the genius raised an arresting hand, halting her in her tracks. "And I'm not going to listen to your arguments, because now... I'm going to sleep."

"You're..."

"Going. To. Sleep." Shikamaru groped around on the ground by his couch until his fingers found the old fabric of his faded, camouflage-patterned blanket, pulling it up over him until only the tops of his ears and his arched eyebrows were visible. "Don't do anything stupid or think that I'll make a good hostage or anything. You're in the heart of the Leaf compound now. Starting trouble will only end in everyone dying. Good night."

He lay there for almost half an hour, eyes closed, breathing steady, before he heard Temari move again. Then there were quiet footsteps and the girl's voice hissed "_Gaara. Kankuro_._ Come here."  
_

Shikamaru lay still, waiting for answers, but none were forthcoming. There was another few seconds of silence, then Temari's voice again, answering an unheard question. "_Yes, he did. How's Sensei?"  
_

Silence.

_"Then even if we _did_ have any information, we couldn't do anything. Damn _'lord' _Kidomaru and his '_acid web'_. He's done more damage than even the trap itself was capable of. I'm sure if he knew he'd be laughing right now_."

Silence.

_"It's not your fault, Gaara; we had to get you out of there safely, and that was the only night before the procedure that we could have done it. It's just a good thing the other three Gate Guardians were out that night, or we'd all be dead right now..."  
_

There was a soft rustle of cloth-by the sound of it, someone was rummaging in the stores of blankets and pillows at the foot of Shikamaru's bed/couch. Then more footsteps, and a muffled grinding noise as a piece of furniture somewhere was moved.

"_Good idea. Sensei is better off in there...no, Gaara, I'll help. there's no way you can move that bed on your own._"

Scrapings, a heavy clang that echoed dully off the walls, creaking bedsprings, and then...

Blissful silence.

Shikamaru was asleep within ninety seconds.

* * *

For a second or two after he woke up, life was good.

Then he sat up and looked around and saw blankets and pillows and three beds tight next to the wall with a sleeping body in each one and lay back down. For another few moments he lay there, looking up at the ceiling, then he muttered a few choice swearwords directed at his boss and swung his legs off the side of his couch to haul himself to his feet. The alarm clock had a crack in its screen from its brief and unexplained flight across the room, but the blinking red numbers told him that it was still working and that, somewhere outside, it was 4:23 in the afternoon. The sun was probably starting to set.

Shikamaru walked over to the beds by the wall and looked down at their occupants, surveying the sleeping faces critically.

Well, she _didn't look_ like a girl. What was he supposed to have done, _groped_ her or something? Although she did look slightly more feminine when she was asleep and not screaming at him... it was an improvement. At least, his head wasn't ringing, and his ears didn't hurt.

..._snakes the size of a trees, huh...?_

_By the look of those jutting collarbones and sunken cheeks, these three had been starving for weeks, if not months. The last incident to visibly take place outside of the walls had been more than five years ago-too long ago for these three to have been displaced by it. The white shirt-things didn't help, but he was still pretty sure there was no real physical reason for the two boys to be mute and that whatever had injured the brown-haired one's eye hadn't come from any kind of blunt force or violent injury. Either they had been taking the time out of their effort to survive in order to shave their own hair off-not something he would give a lot of thought to, in a forest where the animals were as big as buildings-or they had had a home recently, where someone had cut it for them. But apparently that home had not been a friendly one, because they obviously hadn't had enough to eat even while they were there. The time needed for their hair to still be that short didn't match up with the amount of time needed for that degree of emaciation..._

"What are _you_ staring at, Shikanara?"

"Nara Shikamaru," he corrected automatically, and then scowled. "You've been asleep for more than ten hours. I was just seeing if you were dead."

"I've survived for a long time in places worse than this." Temari stretched and took a deep breath, then rolled her neck, the popping sound loud in the still air. "Analyzing us isn't going to get you anywhere, so I'll cut you a deal."

_Damn, she goes from asleep to bargaining that fast? She might be even scarier than my mom..._

"Information for information," Temari said, and smiled a smile that scrunched her eyes shut and bared most of her teeth-more of a threat than a smile, really. "So you can report on us to whoever it is who's making you take care of us, because obviously you aren't the type to do it off your own steam-"

"What makes you so sure of what 'type' I am?"

Their eyes met for a few seconds, then Temari raised one eyebrow. Shikamaru rolled his eyes and made a little circular 'go on then' gesture with one hand, settling on the ground cross-legged and the girl continued, grinning.

"So anyway; you get job satisfaction and we get to find out where we are, because, according to everything I learned growing up, this place shouldn't exist."

All the calculations in Shikamaru's mind ground to a halt at the same time.

"What are you talking about?"

"My turn for a question first." Temari cocked her head to one side. "Stop grinding your teeth like that, it makes my bones hurt."

"Fine. Go."

"Where are we?"

"Leaf Compound," Shikamaru answered instantly, with the practiced speed of one who had had this hammered into their heads a thousand times at school. "The bastion of sanity in a world gone mad. Now, my question-"

"Wait, you're going to have to be more specific than that!" Temari objected, then lowered her voice hurriedly as one of her brothers stirred in their sleep. "What do you mean, 'compound'? What-?"

"If you wanted specific answers, you should have asked specific questions," Shikamaru drawled, in the voice that made his mother hit him on the head with things. "I mean, you know _my type_, right? I'm not going to expend a ton of effort to-_ow. _Troublesome woman. Where did you come from?"

"Several places, all of them far from here."

Shikamaru was about to object when it occurred to him that his answer probably hadn't been much more helpful. "Alright. Fine. I'll give better answers. But you have to do the same." He tried to avoid the feeling that he'd just lost another round of some kind of strange, twisted game as the woman's mouth twitched up into a small, one-sided smile.

"Good. Now, what do you mean when you call it a 'compound'?"

"A compound is a gathering of buildings collected together to serve a single purpose," Shikamaru said, again with an immediacy and boredom to the words that suggested facts learned by rote. "The Leaf Compound is gathered to protect the only true civilization and humanity left in the world after the wars of the Demon King more than two hundred years ago, expeditions into the forest of Death are strictly prohibited unless personally authorized by the Shadow."

Temari tilted her head to one side, considering this new information. "Funny. When I learned the word 'compound', it meant a place to keep prisoners. Fine. Your turn."

"Why are you wearing such freaky-looking outfits?"

Temari opened her mouth as though to answer, then closed it again, looking thoughtful and more than a little bit put out. "That's a complicated one."

"I have all the time in the world. Go. The truth. All of it."

"I _know_." The girl took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts, then looked up and into the distance, her eyes unfocused with remembrance.

"This all started when my little brother... when The Four Gate Guardians... No. That's a bad place to start. This started... when I was ten, and my father made a stupid business deal with someone nobody knew existed."

"Explain," Shikamaru said, quiet but insistent.

"No. That can wait for your next question. My father made a stupid deal and two years later, when I was twelve and our war was over it came back and he didn't hold up his side and..."

Temari's voice had been growing slowly softer and more rushed as she went. It ground to a halt now, and she pinched the bridge of her nose, murmuring a few almost-inaudible words to herself before looking back up, her eyes once again calm and settled. "We were invaded. They destroyed our entire village and burned it to the ground."

A connection snapped into place in Shikamaru's brain. _Smoke on the horizon. People knocking at the gate. _He nodded, unanswering.

"The ones who invaded us must have been highly-trained Enforcers because they knew how to use secret techniques-they went straight up our walls like they were flat ground. Some of us got away but no more than a few dozen, and we haven't seen any of them since. More died. And the rest of us they took off to this... _place_."

_Enforcers. Secret techniques..._"Place."

"Yeah, _place_. I would have thought you knew _that_ word at least. Listen, I don't know a _word _for it because I've never been anywhere like it. Even while we were there there was never a word for it, really."

"Make something up then, or this will be really confusing."

"Fine. Some got away, some died, and the rest went straight to _Hell_. Happy now?"

"Fair enough. Can you stop mood-swinging like that? It's freaking me out."

"I'm not _'mood-swinging'_," Temari snapped, "I just have a really low tolerance for stupidity. So stop talking."

Shikamaru opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. It occurred to him that he'd been doing that a lot lately, but in the face of this woman's infinitely overbearing attitude there really wasn't anything else to do.

"Good. I don't know how long they kept us there, but it has to have been at least five years-we counted the winters. That's where these white things came from; they put them on you once you've become one of Lord Sakon's 'special projects.' It means no one is allowed to beat you too hard."

It was slightly disturbing, hearing those words in such a matter-of-fact voice. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "Beat-?"

"Or kill you." Temari added, apparently as an afterthought. "They couldn't just kill you because they wanted to if you were one of Lord Sakon's special experiments." She paused, obviously anticipating some kind of reaction or a snarky comment. Nothing was forthcoming.

"Gaara was the first. We never had a warning that he'd taken an interest; we went to sleep one night and the next morning he was gone. He would have been... eleven. And when he came back... well, that's not important. Then Kankuro mouthed off to some guard like a _moron_ and got-"

Temari froze as, behind her, one of her brothers stirred groggily and turned over in bed. The brown-haired one sat halfway up, leaning on one elbow and looking around blearily, then noticed the blond sitting up in bed and started to sit up all the way, his face still shadowed and exhausted. Immediately Temari turned her back on Shikamaru and put a hand on her brother's shoulder, pressing him gently back down. "Go back to sleep, it's still dark out. You need to rest. Hey! Shh...Stop worrying about it; Gaara's right next to you. Go to sleep, okay? I'll keep watch."

If Temari had been turned around, she would have seen Shikamaru's eyes fixed on her and her brother-analyzing, taking in details. But by the time she turned back around his eyes were hooded as ever, his expression one of pure disinterest.

"I'm guessing he's younger than you," he said finally, softly, doing his best not to wake anyone up. "And your mom died before you turned ten."

The outsider looked up at him sharply, the distrust that had partially faded from her eyes returning full-force. "What? How-"

"Not important," mumbled Shikamaru dismissively. "You just remind me of my mom. A lot. Just... keep talking."

"Yeah yeah. Where was I?"

"Kankuro was a moron and got mouthy at someone," Shikamaru summarized, then frowned over at the two beds. "Which one is Kankuro? The angry one-eyed one?"

"Yeah," answered Temari absentmindedly, then did a double take and frowned. "Hey, now you owe me two questions. That was cheating."

"We can argue about that when we come to it," Shikamaru drawled, fully aware of the annoyed expression that that tone of voice always seemed to provoke. "If that's the whole story then it's your turn."

"What is a 'Hyuuga' and why is it important?" Temari asked instantly; obviously, she'd been planning this the entire time she'd been talking. "Or... more accurately; why would they be able to tell just by looking whether we were-" she coughed, a hint of a sarcastic laugh creeping into her voice, "-'face-ripping creatures from outside the wall'?"

For a second Shikamaru weighed two sides of his mind, one against the other. The first side was the one that knew he was shiftless slacker and as lazy as the day was long. That side was mumbling something about troublesome woman and '_just _answer_ her, for God's sake.'_ The other side, loud and overwhelmingly piercing, was the voice that sounded like his mother; the voice that had been pounded into him since his first day of the Academy. It said '_you can't tell her that! It's a secret technique and a Compound special ability! Shut her down before this stupid little game gets you in over your head!'_

"It's an ability," he said, and banished the second, more troublesome voice to the back of his mind. "She could see your Chakra system. What did this 'Sakon' dude do with his... what's the word... projects?"

Another mood swing. _Troublesome woman... _Temari's face darkened, her eyes narrowing into slits of stony blue-green. "He experimented on us. On _human beings_. Anyone he could get his hands on, just to see what would happen when he pulled out some section of a human body or filled it full of combined Chakra of a type they didn't have-it's not pretty, by the way. It boils under your skin until it finds a weak spot and then it-"

"I really didn't ask about that," the genius interrupted, trying not to sound unsettled by her darkly reminiscent tone. "Your question."

"Are you an enforcer?"

"I have absolutely no idea. Must be one of those things we don't have here."

Temari waved her hands in the air abstractedly, looking frustrated. "People with... with _special abilities_ that police the village. a special squad. A..."

"Ninja?"

"Yes! A ninja."

"No," Shikamaru said, and was almost completely not lying at all. "I just take care of the people who the Ninja don't want to waste time taking care of. Why are your brothers mute?"

"Because Kankuro's a moron and Gaara has had far too much trauma and pain for a sixteen-year-old boy. Who are you reporting this to?"

"My boss, Morino Ibiki," Shikamaru considered for a second telling her what her 'traumatized' brother would probably be going through right now-in Ibiki's professional care, no less-if the siblings hadn't ended up in his own dim, subterranean living quarters. He decided against it. That might be useful information in the future. "How did being a moron end with him being mute?"

Temari made a noise halfway between a growl of impatience and a sigh of resignation. "You're not going to let up on that, are you? Fine. A long time ago, a few weeks after Gaara first vanished..."

* * *

_It's cold tonight, but the barracks is locked until the next shift of workers comes out and empties out the pallets that take up every inch of the floor.  
_

_Gaara wouldn't admit it even if he _could_ still talk, but he's shivering so hard he's bitten his tongue three times in the past five minutes. The quiet clicking of his chattering teeth is a soft, constant background as Kankuro paces and breathes clouds of steam onto his numb fingers. Temari stands still and pulls her shirt tight around her shoulders, waiting. Waiting...  
_

_"Hey, you three. Why aren't you working?"  
_

_There's a boy behind Gaara. He can't be much older than Gaara himself, his hair parted into bangs that obscure the left side of his face entirely and cast his right eye into shadow. And he's smiling. Smiling a smile that says as clear as day: '_you will get beaten for this, and I will watch.' _Smiling at _Gaara_.  
_

_Kankuro follows his gaze as well, and there's three long strides before he's standing between his little brother and the smiling boy with his arms crossed across his chest. He's angry and Gaara's upset, and it's _Temari's_ eyes that catch on the badge sown to the __smiling-boy's __shirt-sleeve. She feels her stomach sink to somewhere below her knees.  
_

_"We're done with our quota. You want something, pipsqueak?"  
_

_The boy doesn't seem fazed. If anything, his smile grows wider. "Why _Gaara_, are these your siblings? How fortunate. I've been wanting to..._meet_ them... for quite a while now." Gaara cringes away and tries to tug his big brother back as well, but instead Kankuro takes a step forward, cold and hunger and anger fueling an already-foul mood. He grabs a fistful of the pale boy's shirt, ignoring Temari's panicked hiss and Gaara's rapidly draining color.  
_

_"Are you sure you want to do this, brother-of-Gaara?" The boy smiles-an expression that would normally be disarming twisted into a smirk. Temari notices, through a daze of horror, that he's wearing some kind of sickly greenish lipstick. "You know I'm in touch with the guards. Perhaps you're just slow. Do you have mental problems?"  
_

_Gaara tries to catch his brother's arm as he pulls it back, but he's too late. Kankuro was never one for fist-fighting and he's as half-starved as they all are, but the punch still snaps the boy's head back and splits his lip. And then, almost muffled by the falling snow..._

"Sllch'." Shikamaru noted, a touch dryly. "Like the noise it makes when you slice meat in half. Got it. And...?"

*_  
...And the boy's hand is buried in her brother's throat.  
_

_It takes five sickening, mind-numbing seconds of pure terror before she realizes with a jolt that the blood-the glazing eyes, the gaping wound, the _death_ isn't happening. But there the boy is; hair hanging in his face, his expression obscured totally by inky shadows. And his hand... his hand is...  
_

_Lord Sakon pushes forward a little and the place where his wrist melts smoothly into Kankuro's throat makes a sound like a knife being pulled from a wound-a thick, low _wet_ noise that makes Temari's stomach turn. Thin streams of something thick and dark snake down his face from his nose and the corners of his mouth as Kankuro's eyes roll up in his head.  
_

_"I won't kill you, brother-of-Gaara, because there is a slight possibility that your life is worth something" Sakon says kindly, and smiles up at his victim like this is a friendly handshake on the street. "But you really have to learn somehow, so..."  
_

_And he tears his hand away, leaving droplets of scarlet on the snow; his hand is full of something wet and red and white that should _not_ be out here in the air-  
_

_Gaara doesn't make a sound, but there are tears running down his cheeks as his brother crumples onto the snow, smooth skin closing itself over the twisted mess that remains of his throat._

* * *

"...and that's the last time they've talked since, right?" Shikamaru scowled, storing the technique in his mind, leaving his troublesome super-computer brain to pick out the details and analyze it. _Bare-handed surgery? Creepy... hope I never meet _that_ freak._

"Yeah. Gaara wasn't-" Temari stopped dead in the middle of her sentence and crossed her arms belligerently across her chest. "Dammit, what is it with you and squeezing extra information out of people?"

"Maybe I'm just a lovable and charismatic person," the boy drawled sarcastically. "Stranger things have happened."

"Whatever, Nara. What's going to happen to us?"

"No idea."

_Dang, that was the wrong thing to say, wasn't it? Judging by the look on her face, yeah..._

"Make your best _guess_," Temari ground out. "Go on."

"Well... if you were some kind of invading menace-and if you are, you may as well eat me now, because otherwise this is an enormous waste of time-"

"Which we're _not_," The girl pointed out impatiently. "Answer the question, Narashi." Shikamaru winced at the mangled approximation of his name.

"Well since you aren't face-stealing outsider freaks, you'll probably get released into the compound. Might even get a couple courses in the Academy and get trained as a ninja, but that's a long shot. Why does your brother have eyes like a raccoon?"

"Gaara hasn't slept for more than five years," Temari said, with matter-of-fact certainty. "Not since Sakon did...something. We don't know what. Even Gaara doesn't remember what happened to him, but he says there's a... monster in his head. He says it whispers to him. Tells him things. Tries to make him kill us." She caught the look Shikamaru was giving Gaara and backtracked quickly. "-or something like that, anyway. He went to sleep the first night and destroyed the barracks and since then he hasn't slept at all."

"So if he's sleeping right now-"

"He's not." The girl tilted her head like she was listening for something, then shook her head, more decisively. "Gaara's learned how to live with it. He's figured out how to shut off his brain without going to sleep and letting out the monster. He's like that right now."

"Meditating? People still do that?" Shikamaru yawned at the very thought of Iruka-sensei's lectures about peace of the mind and Chakra circulation. He'd always just fallen asleep sitting up, and then Naruto would push him and tip him over on purpose. _Ah, the good old academy days..._"And what happens when he wakes up?"

For the first time since Shikamaru had brought up her mother, a smile quirked the corner of Temari's mouth.

"I guess that's up to you."

* * *

**Now I just have to figure out what _does_ happen when he wakes up. *sigh* Writing is ha~ard... :) A big 'ol THANK YOU goes out to you two who reviewed, and a slightly more diminuitive(but still large) thank you to everyone who thought that this was good enough to merit a watch or a fav. On the subject of reviews:**

**Chibi .Tantei: I love it when people give me specific likes/dislikes in their reviews. It makes me feel like they're not just saying it to be nice. XD And no new, exciting jutsu in this chapter, unfortunately; just a lot of talking. Ah well. Thank you for your feedback!**

**aqua-pistachio: And Ino is all, like, '_ohmigod_, Shika, you should have figured this out!' and Shikamaru is all, like, 'shut up, woman.' :) In his defense, she is very skinny, short-haired, and surprisingly buff for a girl. But still. I love the word 'creative' by the way-one of the greatest compliments you can receive, in a section of the site that has more than 50,000 other stories to compare with. Thanks for the review!**

** -MFS  
**


	3. Claustrophobia

**Fandom: If you don't know, what are you doing here?**

**Characters: Just about everyone, but mostly the sand sibs and Shikamaru, because being locked in a basement makes a story pretty focused.**

**Warnings: Maybe a bit of language, depending on what you call 'language'.**

**Other: ****Okay. I was going to wait and update once I finished the fic, but since I already have two chapters after this written i didn't really see the point. Anyway...here we see me playing around with the ways different characters's powers would work in this story, and a mysterious complication messes up all Shikamaru's plans of waiting around for someone else to make a decision. Also, more sign-language, because the more Shikamaru knows of it the less complicated the job of writing this story gets. XD**

** I'm trying to get my more artistic friend to post pictures of some of the rookie 12 on her deviantart account, but for now you can all go look at her picture of the Sound 4: **http:/ akimichiko .deviantart. com/art/Naruto-AU-Sound-4-175378413 **(get rid of the spaces) because she's cool that way. Ttly pimping your art here, dude. :D**

* * *

_I am _so bored! Dark Copy!"

Tenten cursed as a shower of sparks spiraled around Naruto and lit up the air around her, twining into complicated networks that glowed and flickered in the pre-dawn grayness. For a split second there was a hint of a bare skeleton covered in twining muscles and then, with a soft _whump_ of sandals on grass, a ring of identical, black-clad ninja surrounded her.

"Damn," muttered Tenten. She glanced around, counting her opponents with a practiced eye, then sprang backwards and into the air with such force the ground splintered under her sandals. The bandages wrapped around her arms spun behind her as she gave the ends a practiced tug and let them fly free, flying into the air and revealing the skin of her arms underneath. The skin shone palely in the dawn light; layer upon layer of pale, thin scars in knots and tangles from her wrists to her biceps. The flapping cloth caught the dawn light for a split second as the girl arced smoothly over the shadows of the low training ground walls, and then she was landing, perfectly poised, at the far end of the field. Naruto's range couldn't stretch that far, and both of them knew it.

Both of them also knew that this was Tenten's element. Naruto cursed and started to speed forwards across the scarred ground, dodging behind obstacles and clones alike, once barely making cover in time as a senbon nearly gave him a third ear piercing. From the sidelines, Sakura's gently shining fingertips resting on his hastily splinted shin, Lee smiled a gleaming, triumphant smile.

Tenten flung out an arm, scar tissue forming pale tangles from her fingertips to her biceps. There was a sudden, sharp flash of chakra and a knife appeared from her hand as though by magic, and then blood spattered across her scars as another bloody gash joined their ranks.

Now it was Naruto's turn to look taken aback. His copies gathered in a defensive wall around him and he vanished among the identical figures like a shadow, indistinguishable from the shifting faces and bodies. Tenten scanned the ranks then threw out her arm, leaving a spray of blood in the dawn light. There was a flicker of chakra and the blood seemed to squirm in midair, darkening and molding itself. The first rays of sunlight glinted off of black steel, and then the blood was gone and a spray of long throwing needles peppered the mob of Naruto duplicates. The crowd of identical boys fell backwards, twisting in on themselves and imploding in tiny bursts of chakra. Only one remained; the original, staggering slightly from a glittering black needle through his thigh.

"Naruto that's a hit! You're out; Kiba, your turn."

"Teacher Iruka~a..."

Umino Iruka shook his head and gestured Naruto off the field, but spared a smile as his former student limped to the sidelines, holding his leg.

"Sorry Naruto, but you suggested switch-out sparring. It doesn't matter if you can keep going with a needle through your leg in a combat situation." Iruka reached over, waiting patiently as the boy rolled up his favorite pair of baggy black training shorts, and gave the needle a firm tug and pressed a cloth pad against the wound. "This is just an exercise, remember?"

Naruto dipped his head in something that was either a wince or a nod and pulled the cloth away from the neat hole in his thigh. There was a faint wisp of smoke, a single red-orange spark, and the hole vanished as though it had never been there at all.

"I rock," Naruto muttered, and leaned back against one of the enormous, warped trees that bordered the training grounds. "Hey. Hey teacher."

"Yes?"

"I need somewhere to sleep. Did you sell your couch?"

Iruka adopted an expression of mock-seriousness, shaking his head. "Now Naruto, you have your own perfectly good apartment now. Why would you abuse the Compound funds that pay your rent for you?"

"Because it stinks and I hate it." Naruto wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue in exaggerated disgust. "Come on, teacher..."

"No."

"You always say no, but you know you won't throw me out when I show up on your couch."

Iruka didn't answer, just smiled a resigned smile. The dawn air was cool and fresh, and even Naruto managed to be quiet for a few minutes, watching with detached interest as Kiba sprang over a volley of throwing knives and threw down a smoke bomb.

Whatever the Inuzuka did, hidden by the rising cloud of purplish fog, it must have hit home. Tenten went spinning and landed with a heavy thud at the border of the field, holding her bleeding bicep and swearing vehemently under her breath. A giant white dog lying on the sidelines howled triumphantly, shifting restlessly in place to keep its weight off of its heavily bandaged chest, and Kiba punched a fist in the air and howled back.

"Tenten out," Iruka shouted. "Shino in!"

Another contemplative stretch of early-morning peace followed as Shino carried out his silent, devious strategies. Naruto hummed under his breath, considering whatever was on his mind in relative silence. Iruka watched the bouts as they raged across the field, occasionally giving advice or tips (_Choji, you're not guarding your back! Hinata, your block is a little weak. Watch out for that, okay?_ _Kiba, this is a _training exercise! _Take it easy!_).

"Teacher..."

"Hm?"

"What's outside the wall?"

"Well, we're not really-" started Iruka absentmindedly, then paused, blinked once or twice, and frowned sternly. "Naruto, that's classified!" The boy's face set abruptly into a stubborn scowl and Iruka groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose as though to allay a sudden headache.

"_Naruto_... I know for a fact that you haven't even taken the Journeyman exam yet. Shikamaru is the only one who I'm allowed to even _talk _about this with."

"Shikamaru has _outsiders _in his _basement_," Naruto muttered, "I'm sick of weeding people's flower beds when he's out doing _classified _stuff and meeting people with _no eyebrows_-"

"He's working for the most dangerous man in the compound, Naruto," Iruka chided, "he runs the holding cells for the most dangerous intruders we've ever seen. If you want to work under _Morino Ibiki_ for-I'll admit, a _terrible_ wage-and stay locked up in your basement with criminals all day, then you should go and apply for a job."

"Like Scarface would give him a job!" Kiba skidded to his knees next to Naruto, throwing up a cloud of dirt and grass. "Dead-last Naruto, an interrogator? Yeah right!"

"I could if I wanted to!" Naruto growled, then jumped to his feet when Kiba rolled his eyes pityingly. "You wanna fight?" Within seconds the subject of outsiders was completely forgotten as the two tussled and scratched, play-fighting like a pair of the Inuzuka dogs.

"Interrogator? Heaven forbid," Iruka murmured under his breath, and leaned back to watch the matches, a nostalgic smile on his face.

It was quite a while later, and Temari was doing push-ups and Shikamaru was making a package of ready-heat soup with veggies. His boss had, to his interest but not his surprise, apparently stocked his refrigerator again at some point during the past day and a half with all sorts of easily-made, high-calorie food. Also, his stove was mysteriously functioning again. Obviously these people, whoever they might happen to be, where much more important than his boss had let on. Maybe the Leaf Shadow...

...No. No, no, no. That was the kind of question that got you fired. 'Take care of the outsiders'; that was the only thing he had to do. A full fridge, no figures of authority to bother him, and a perfect position to do a little 'information gathering' of his own-

-_-wait, no. That's a bad idea, remember? How stupid of you would it be to lose yourself a job like this just because you couldn't keep your nose out of other people's business? You would have to be a moron, Nara._

"Hey, Nara."

Shikamaru hissed between his teeth as steaming broth sloshed over his fingers. Only a strange little sidestep-kind of undignified dance, really-kept the stuff from broiling his feet, and he heard the troublesome woman snicker as he struggled to regain his balance. He turned around and glared at her with all the dignity he could manage, balancing four bowls on a tray on one hand and sticking the other fingers gingerly in his mouth as they started to turn a scorched lobster-shell pink.

"_What_, woman?"

Temari grunted as the tip of her nose touched the floor, not sparing the energy to look up at her host. "It smells freaky down here. When was the last time you showered?"

Shikamaru opened his mouth to deliver a scornful response, then frowned as the question registered. _A week... two weeks? _He ran through his memories of the past few weeks as he set the soup down on the counter, automatically reaching out to turn off the stove. _When was the last time you visited Mom and Dad?_

"...about two and a half months ago," he pronounced eventually, and rolled his eyes at the expression on her face. "Honestly, the woman who has been living in the forest for four weeks thinks I should take showers every day too? I guess girls stay the same no matter where they go."

"I haven't showered in more than six months," Temari informed him, a slight note of triumph in her voice (and only someone as stupidly competitive as Troublesome Temari could turn 'longest stretch of filthiness' into a competition), "That's why I don't understand why you wouldn't have a shower when you had one you could use. If you're not going to use it, _I_ want to."

Gaara nodded fervently. Kankuro rolled his eyes and made a few dismissive gestures from his lounging spot on the floor, then winced as Temari smacked him succinctly on the side of the head. "And don't let me catch you using language like that again, either," growled the girl, and pushed herself up one last time on trembling arms. Even as she lowered herself to the ground for the last time, her shoulder gave a sharp _pop_. She winced briefly, then ignored it completely and rolled over onto her back, folding her arms behind her head. For a second it looked like she was going to go to sleep right there on the floor and Shikamaru felt a tiny, inexplicable pang of relief that the woman was capable of being normal. Then she gritted her teeth and started doing crunches. Shikamaru groaned internally and tried to forget how long it had been since he went out and trained properly. _Too long_.

"Gaara wants to know if you have any-" (Sharp inhale, long, slow exhale) "-clothes we can use. Fifteen. Sixteen..."

"Probably," Shikamaru muttered, remembering the mysterious, newly-stocked fridge. "I wouldn't be surprised. The shower's over there."

"Gaara, you can go first."

The boy nodded and got up. The effort was obviously still taxing for him, but when he finally got to his feet his footsteps were soundless and his movements unnaturally coordinated. He crossed the room in a few startlingly fast motions and vanished through the doorway with a flash of pale cloth and dingy red hair.

Shikamaru watched him go and frowned. Gaara wasn't the weirdest person he'd ever met, not by a long shot. He had been in Aburame Shino's class in the Academy, and had spent a good deal of his Journeyman exam dodging splatters of Tenten's shape-shifting, deadly, and-more importantly-_metallic_ blood. But the kid was definitely... odd. When he was in the room he made the hairs on the back of Shikamaru's neck stand up, and when he left he left the impression of never having been there at all; he came and went like some kind of red-headed ghost. _Interesting..._

A hand reached in front of his face and snatched one of the soup bowls.

Kankuro made the harsh, breathy noise that Shikamaru was starting to recognize as a laugh, and the Nara realized he had been standing there, staring at the door with his mouth hanging open. For heaven's sake, how long had he been out of action? He'd must have been just standing there-with a distinctly Uzumaki-Naruto-like expression on his face, even-for what must have been at least two and a half minutes. He marshaled his expression hastily and grabbed a bowl of soup as Temari surfaced over the back of the couch, pink-faced with exertion, hiding the trembling in her arms by busily straightening her clothes and wiping sweat from her forehead.

"Soup," Shikamaru said plainly, and shoved a bowl her way before slouching back to his couch and settling into the dented cushions. "Best food in the world."

"Because you actually _like_ it, or because you're too lazy to make anything else?" Temari held up a hand before he could answer, grinning. "Never mind. I already know the answer to that one."

"Hngh," said Shikamaru intelligently, and gulped more scalding hot broth.

A long silence followed. Somewhere in another room, there was the sound of water running. Temari drank down her soup slowly, considering the basement as Kankuro pulled himself to his feet and slouched over to counter to dig through Shikamaru's cabinets.

Temari slammed her bowl down on the table with a _crack_ like-Shikamaru winced-breaking pottery, and turned to the genius with a triumphant expression on her face. "I know what it is!"

Shikamaru blinked at her for a few seconds, but she didn't seem to be inclined to add anything on to that. "You know..." He prompted, raising his eyebrow like his dad always did when he thought Shikamaru wasn't thinking his moves through carefully enough. "...don't just stand there all day, woman. You just cracked one of my only bowls. It would be polite to tell me why."

"I know why I hate it so much here!" Temari made a broad sweeping gesture that seemed to include anything and everything the basement had to offer-Shikamaru leaned back as the swinging hand ended its journey a few inches from his nose. "There's no _air_."

"There's plenty of air, troublesome woman," Shikamaru drawled patronizingly, and yet again felt that little pang of annoyance that this outsider was complaining over _Leaf Compound _property, "or we would be dead right-"

"You know what I'm talking about," Temari snapped, her satisfaction disappearing momentarily. "But there's no wind. I _need_ the fresh air. Don't we get to go out at all? Or are we just going to be locked down here until we die?"

Shikamaru actually had to give that one some thought. It was very possible that Morino was never intending to let these people out into the fresh air ever again, no matter how thoroughly they proved themselves to be harmless (although the more he watched them, the more the inexplicable feeling crept over Shikamaru that these people _weren't_ harmless; not by a long shot.) and that they were indeed destined to die in the cellars of the Leaf Compound. Then again from what he'd heard the Leaf Shadow was a really nice guy, and he had a grandson not much younger than Gaara. If he though they weren't a threat, not even Shikamaru's boss could keep them locked up underground...

"Dunno," he concluded finally, and Temari groaned in frustration and dropped back onto his couch, her head in her hands. Shikamaru frowned as a pang of guilt shot through him, and hurried to cut it off. "I've got to let you out sometimes I guess...but you'd be under constant surveillance and they'd seal off your chakra, so-"

"Chakra?" Temari laughed bitterly, not raising her head. "I don't have any anymore. Haven't had it for years."

_...that was unexpected_.

"You...lost your chakra." _Never heard of anything like that. Impossible. _The suspicion he'd felt when he first saw the outsiders returned, nudging at the back of his brain. _She's probably lying to you to get you off guard._

Temari had glanced up sharply at the dubious tone in his voice; she must have seen the doubt in his eyes because she sat up a little straighter, visibly insulted by his lack of confidence in her word. "Think about it, Nara; if I could use chakra would I be this beat up by a few big bugs and your wimpy little _forest_?" Shikamaru felt a twinge in whatever small amount of national pride he had and opened his mouth to protest-those were some pretty nasty animals out there, and the thought that the Leaf Compound had substandard hazards was somehow insulting-but Temari talked over him. "Where I come from we have Coyotes the size of houses, and the creatures that live under the sand eat those for breakfast. _That's_ where I trained."

"If it was that bad," Shikamaru interjected, "why didn't you just leave?" Kankuro came back and threw himself onto the couch heavily, laying down three of the extremely expensive oranges Shikamaru definitely hadn't put in his own cupboards. Shikamaru remembered the lecture he'd gotten, years and years ago; _'oranges are worth _3000 _yen each. If I see you drop _one more slice_ of that, I'm sending you out to do pushups!'-_and winced internally as Kankuro tore the peel with his teeth and dug in like he ate oranges every day. _Where was I..._ "It sounds far too troublesome to make a village there."

"It was," Temari said matter-of-factly. "But the first wind-shadow made The Wall, and they didn't dare try anything inside it. They knew if they did, we would have flattened them." Kankuro made an emphatic gesture like he was trying to punch the ceiling and Temari's mouth turned up at one corner. "...Kankuro says '_hell yes we would_'."

Shikamaru was idly running through forty or fifty reasonable excuses to pry some of those troublesome hand signs out of Temari-she had never volunteered the meaning of any of them before now, so maybe this was a good time-when the sound of water in the other room stopped. There was a minute of quiet wherein Gaara did who-knew-what, and then his head poked out of the door, his face still dripping with water and even paler than before. Temari squinted at his hands across the room, then frowned and gestured back, motioning her little brother to come closer. Gaara shook his head, and another long string of silent conversation started.

That was still the most troublesome part of all; the fact that not only were these three an unknown factor, they also spoke a common language that was most definitely not in his vocabulary. Even if he did already know at least thirty or forty different words, and have theories about several others, the sign-language that the siblings had apparently _invented_ was still 99% a mystery to Shikamaru. It didn't help that as the subject matter got more and more complicated both brothers had specialized their own specific dialects; as Gaara would get more emphatic, his gestures got more sweeping and commanding, like he was conducting some invisible orchestra, and as Kankuro sat alone and 'talked' to himself about Gods only knew what the words devolved-_evolved?_-into a series of precise, minute finger-movements, almost indistinguishable from harmless, nervous twitching.

And Temari, apparently, spoke both fluently. Shikamaru fought the urge to slam his head into something and devoted his mind instead to observing as Gaara mimed something that was, luckily, in fairly basic signs. Somewhere under layers of apathy and annoyance, his mind worked at lightning speed; making connection, translating. A second before Temari said it, he knew that-

"Gaara needs pants," Temari said, and then sniffed the air and turned sharply to look at her brother and his stash of oranges. "Hey, where did you get those? Gimme one." Kankuro shook his head emphatically. Temari's eyes narrowed in what Shikamaru was-after no more than four days, too-already beginning to recognize as a 'trouble' expression. Which meant that if he didn't do something soon, he was going to end up with a fight going on in his basement. His stuff wasn't sturdy enough to take the full force of the troublesome woman's wrath. Something would have to be done.

"Listen," he started, and then glanced over as Gaara waved politely but emphatically from the doorway. "I think I have some clothes down here. This is where I live, so my closet's just over there. I probably have more _oranges_ too," he shot the woman a pointed look, then tried not to instinctively back down as she turned a razor-sharp, blue-green glare on him instead. _She's way too much like my mom... what a drag..._ "And I might be able to get you outside," he added on impulse, and was relieved to see the anger diffuse, to be replaced with a wary interest.

"Is that you giving your word Nara, or is it you trying to keep me from being 'troublesome'?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and raised one hand sarcastically, pressing it to his heart. "Swear. Pinkie swear, if you like."

He was expecting her to sock him on the arm or something. Instead she gave him a calculating kind of look, tilting her head to one side as though weighing him up, and then held out a hand, pinkie outstretched.

"You aren't serious," Shikamaru muttered, "_Really_, troublesome woman? This is kid stuff! I was being a wise-ass and I am _not_ going to pinkie swear, so you can drop that hand now."

Temari smirked back at him, and the hand stayed persistently where it was. "Swear you'll find a way to get us outside, Nara." Now Kankuro was smirking at him too, and although Shikamaru had never seen him smile like his sister did that smug expression seemed to be a family trait. It was like being watched by a pair of the Hyuuga clan's smug, white-furred cats.

He gave in. Better not to antagonize the woman anyway, especially since he was outnumbered three to one. His abilities were pretty strong, but he hadn't had a real fight in ages and he was pretty rusty; besides, the Shadow Bind was best used with backup, and there was definitely no backup for him here.

"Alright, _fine_," he muttered, and hooked their fingers together, thanking whatever powers were listening that Ino wasn't there to see this. She would have teased him for weeks, if not months. "But it's gonna take at least another few weeks." Temari shrugged and pulled her hand away, satisfied-for now, at any rate.

Gaara came out of the bathroom pulling on a shirt that was far too big for him as he came, and Shikamaru caught a second glimpse of the dark hourglass on his chest before it was obscured by an enormously baggy dark red shirt that must have been at least three sizes too big. It hung low on the back of his neck as well, and the genius realized again that he could see every single vertebrae in the boy's spine-and something that glinted faintly on the back of his neck...

Kankuro noticed it at the same time as Shikamaru. He grabbed Gaara's arm and pulled him around, peering at the base of the boy's skull with his good eye, then gestured for Temari to come over. Shikamaru reached over and flicked another light-switch, wiping away the comforting dimness as a few more of the ancient overhead lights flickered on, then walked over to join the group around the emaciated redhead.

There was a piece of metal buried in Gaara's spine.

Temari hissed between her teeth-whether from anger or fear or disgust it was hard to tell-and reached out, touching the lump of silvery metal with the tip of one finger. "Gaara...? Do you know what this is?"

Gaara shook his head and tried to crane his head around in a futile attempt to see the back of his own neck, then slashed a hand urgently through the air. _What is it?_ Shikamaru guessed, and felt a thrill of success as Temari bit her lower lip and shook her head. "I don't know. It's like one of Kidomaru's earrings, but it's stuck to the back of your neck..." She traced the outline of the thing. "...right here."

Shikamaru squinted at Gaara's hands again, but this sentence was far beyond his limited vocabulary. Temari understood every word of it however, and her expression eased into a foul-tempered scowl. "Yeah, I bet you're right. I'm not going to mess with it then. That bastard... for all we know it'll kill you if we try to take it off." She cursed under her breath-the word was a foreign one to Shikamaru, but obviously a swear-word by the jagged snapping sound of the syllables-and curled one hand into a fist as though she was just _itching_ to punch somebody. Shikamaru side-stepped with deceptive swiftness, getting her brother in between the two of them, before turning his attention on the matter at hand.

At close range the thing was strangely familiar; a small knob of tarnished, gleaming metal about the size and shape of a thumbprint It wasn't an old wound, as it had appeared from a distance; a circle of neat scar tissue surrounded where it penetrated the boy's skin, with a precision that could surely only have come from a trained surgeon.

"It looks like the stuff we used to get imported," he concluded eventually, and Gaara glanced at him with sudden interest. _You know something about this? _He mouthed. The genius shook his head absently and lowered his head, listening. _Humming? A power source? _Shikamaru reached out, hesitated, then pressed a fingertip to the metal-

He had a split second to register that even after being pressed against the boy's skin for who-knew-how-long and long exposure to hot water, the metal was icy cold. Then there was a crackle like the searing _hiss_ of lightning and a sudden numbness all the way up his arm and...

...he was lying flat on his back on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.

It was strangely peaceful down here, even if he couldn't feel his arm. Shikamaru lay still for a few seconds, enjoying the peace of his now staticky world, before a pair of hands grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slapped him hard across the face. Sound filtered back in suddenly, penetrating the comforting silence abruptly with a sharp, low voice that was really, really familiar...

His brain processed the face swimming in front of him for the first time and the situation came flooding back into his mind as the Troublesome Woman pulled back a hand to slap him again, snarling more obscenities as she did so. "-just a little brat but if you _are_ dead we're all in deep-"

"Okay, okay..." Shikamaru groaned, and swatted her hands away with his remaining arm, pitching forwards until he could sit up without falling over. "Fine, I'm up. I mean... I'm awake. Stop slapping, woman!"

Temari lowered her hand and let go of his shirtfront, dropping him bodily back onto the ground.

"Way to freak me out, Nara." She reached down a hand, which he considered sleepily for a few seconds before realizing that she was trying to off him a hand up. _It's rude to disregard a woman when she's trying to do something for you, _scolded the mother-voice in his head_; you're implying you think she's either too weak to help you or you're so powerful you don't need help and _believe me_, you don't want her to think-_pay attention when I'm talking, Nara Shikamaru!

He took the hand gingerly, and Temari hissed between her teeth as a crackling jolt jumped between their hands, but heaved him to his feet anyway. Shikamaru frowned. Was that a stagger he saw? Temari had managed to get her footing again so fast it was hard to tell, but the unsteady, wobbling steps had almost definitely been there. "When was the last time you slept, woman?"

"A few hours ago," Temari said defensively. "Why?"

"Mm.." Shikamaru tightened his grip as the woman started to pull away, holding on tight. "Squeeze on my hand."

Temari glared at him like he had gone insane, tugging on his arm. "No. Why should I?"

"Listen," Shikamaru tried, holding on gamely as she wrenched his arm from side to side. "I'm not going to let go until you give me a reason to, and there's no reason you can give me except proving that you're not going to die from some kind of weird outsider disease. So squeeze my hand."

Temari rolled her eyes, but her hand-strangely hot and calloused and dry for a girl's hand-tensed around his own.

Shikamaru waited. And waited.

"Go on."

"I _am_," Temari growled. Her hand twitched, but the pressure barely intensified. "It's... what did you do?"

"I..." Shikamaru frowned and let go of her hand. Temari seemed to try holding on for a second, as though she was trying to force her traitorous hands to do their job properly, but even as the Nara's hand pulled away her fingers started slowly trembling. She stared at them, ignoring him as he backed away. "I think I just activated something. Jeez...you people are a pain! Sit down before you fall down, woman. Gaara." Gaara turned to him, looking-if not panicky or even scared-worried. "Do you feel anything?"

Gaara shrugged and signed. Temari looked shocked and numb, but translated anyway as though she was on automatic. "...a little bit dizzy, like there was a shock when you touched the thing on the back of my-his-neck. Other than that, I'm fine..."

"Good." Shikamaru held up his own hand, flexing the numbed fingers, contemplating, remembering the humming of the metal and the charge that had slammed through him. _"Charged_... charged with... charged with..." _No chakra_... "When did you stop being able to mold chakra?"

Kankuro motioned something angrily, and Shikamaru recognized a sliding, violent gesture as the name of the man 'Sakon'-the bare-handed surgeon who had the ability to mute someone just by getting skin contact with their throat. "Just after Sakon..." He said, and Temari closed her mouth abruptly, derailed by the sudden change of translator. "...Sakon... what?"

Temari was staring at him. "How did you..?"

"You said Sakon put a hand in his throat," Shikamaru said, and imitated the motion clumsily. "It's sliding through skin, right? It's easy to see the basic ones. But that's his name, not what he did. What did he say, woman?"

"Uh..." Temari blinked at him, still momentarily nonplussed, then shook her head as though trying to throw away the confusion. "Say it again, Kankuro?" Kankuro gestured emphatically, repeating the word a few times with a sarcastic emphasis. "Oh. He says..." she hesitated for a second. "...after Sakon started to experiment on him. Same for me. Gaara?"

Gaara nodded. He too was bending and flexing his fingers, looking troubled. Shikamaru cursed internally as the full implications of this spreading numbness occurred to him-someone incapable of speaking, suddenly losing movement as well; Gaara (and Kankuro too, if this continued to spread) would be rendered incapable of communication. How where you supposed to question someone if they were mute and paralyzed?

Shikamaru ran over a hundred different options in his head, discarding each of them one by one. No medical ninja could get in, because no one could get in. No one could get out either, unless he unlocked the basement security to let in a medic in which case it would be his fault if the outsiders escaped and he might lose his job (_and his basement-going back to his mother's house was _not_ his favorite idea right now._) for negligence.

Executive decision made.

"Hey, woman," he started, and was encouraged by the sharp ferocity Temari packed into her glare. If she was dying of a fatal disease, she wouldn't have the energy to look that utterly _bothersome_. "You wanted to go outside, right..?"

* * *

**...No, she's just saying that because she likes to hear herself talk. Stupid genius! He's fun to write though, even though I'm not a genius so I can't write his thoughts nearly as well as I want to. The analysis is fun; if he's not careful Temari's going to start figuring out that she's giving a ton of stuff away. :D**

**Now that FF has a review response button, you guys don't have to slog through the review responses anymore! But I love the way you guys give reviews-so detailed and cool. Please, for the sake of my productivity, keep it up! I love it.**

** Yours, MFS  
**


	4. Asthenophobia

**Fandom: Guess. :P  
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**Characters: Still Shikamaru and sand ninjas, but there are other people in there too, this time.  
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**Warnings: Uh...beware of really long update times? And blood and maybe swearing, but i can't remember if there's any of that in this chapter.  
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**Other: This is not what I was going to do at all. Came back to the chapters I had planned out and found out that writing when you're practicly high on pills doesn't make a good story. So that's part of the reason this took so long, the other is because I self-beta'd this one. My beta is taking some time off for reasons I'm not going to spout all over the internet, but I'm starting to think like she writes. :X So it should be okay. And I spell checked everything.**

* * *

Shikamaru had absolutely no warning.

It wasn't that he really needed one-he wasn't being invaded or anything-but it would have been nice to know that once he told Morino Ibiki that he needed a release permit the request would go from his hands to the board of regulation, from there to the advisers, and from there to the Leaf Shadow.

Who would show up in his basement. Unannounced.

He could have used a warning.

If he had had a warning, he could have used the information to (for example) prepare the outsider siblings for how to react when an old man mysteriously appeared behind them with complete silence and patted one of them on the head. Gaara had whipped around at the sudden contact and slammed his hand down with a surprising amount of force-enough to break every finger in the gnarled old hand that had ruffled his stubbly hair.

Fortunately for everyone in the basement at the time the blow didn't connect, because a man with silver hair and a single lazy, black eye flickered out of nowhere and caught the blow without the slightest sign of effort. Kankuro was immediately on his feet as the gray-haired man gently bent Gaara's arm back until the boy was forced back down onto his seat. Then, still holding on with one hand, he turned and hooked Kankuro's foot out from under the boy as he ran forward. He grunted as he hit the ground, but turned the fall into a solid roll, landing on his feet like a ninja would and reaching for something that was clearly an absent weapon.

Shikamaru could have sworn the silver-haired _jounin_-and there was no way this man wasn't an elite, not with moves like those-winked towards Shikamaru as he let go of Gaara's hand, but that wasn't important so much at the moment, not with the threat of violence so thick in the air.

Temari was yelling hoarsely in a language he didn't know, unable to move from her place on the couch. Good thing the compound had such an efficient justice government system; the woman was getting weaker and weaker. Even if they did get clearance to head above ground, someone was going to have to carry her-and it was not, Shikamaru swore to himself mentally, going to be him. They could get the gray-haired guy to do it, he looked strong enough.

"Kakashi, that's enough," the Leaf Shadow said gently, and immediately the elite dropped back to stand at his shoulder. Even with the ridiculous, indolent slouch he was putting on, the man was still at least two heads taller than the leader of the village. Even Gaara would be taller than him standing up, and Gaara was so small and thin he looked more like he was twelve than-as Temari had informed him-sixteen.

"Troublesome outsiders; Lord Hokage." The old-fashioned word felt odd actually coming out of his mouth when usually he would only see it in history books, but it was one of the last formal words left in the language and his mother would kill him if he didn't use it in the presence of the village leader himself. "Lord Hokage; troublesome outsiders. Gaara, Temari, Kankuro," he gave a cursory bow, catching Temari's eye and giving her a pointed grimace. She seemed to take the hint, because she pulled herself weakly up on the couch and bent her head in a brief, awkward nod. Gaara gave the old man a piercing, considering look, then bowed respectfully, far more politely than Shikamaru had.

Kankuro looked mutinous. Gaara, straightening, seemed to realize that his brother intended to ignore the courtesy protocols of the village that could have them summarily executed; his face tightened slightly into an expression that, if Shikamaru had to put a name to it, said 'not again...' He turned to his brother and frowned forbiddingly, gesturing sharply to the old man and his escorts. Kankuro shook his head.

Gaara was hard to read at the best of times, but Shikamaru hadn't spent the last few days with his eyes closed. The boy was angry and upset about his sister, and he was definitely not in the mood to argue; he raised an open hand to chest-level, palm-out, and then clenched it sharply into a fist like he was crushing something in his palm. It was a sign that he had never used before-a vicious, jerky motion-and it brought instant results.

Shikamaru felt another unwilling tug of interest as both of the red-head's siblings went pale with shock and something almost like fear. Kankuro ground his teeth, but he didn't hesitate. He bowed as respectfully as his brother had, and stayed that way until Gaara dropped his hand to his side again. Even Gaara himself looked slightly shaken as he lowered his hand, and he shot Kankuro a look that was nearly apologetic as his brother straightened again, his face set.

We need to get above ground-um... my Lord," Shikamaru inadvertently took a step back as the wise old eyes turned on him, trying to ignore the feeling he was being taken apart, looked at from every angle and put back together again. The eyes were incredibly kind, but they didn't leave a single detail unseen; it was like being looked at by his father, mother, and sensei all at the same time, and it was kind of creepy. "Something happened, and she's sick. She's getting some kind of weird claustrophobia." He jerked a thumb at Temari over his shoulder, then caught his boss's eye and winced. That wasn't exactly an exemplary situational briefing, sure, but did Ibiki have to glare like he'd just given away state secrets or something? "…sir," he amended.

"Of course," said the Leaf Shadow calmly. "I wouldn't dream of delaying you. Just tell me, if you would; what allegiance are they?"

"Lord Hokage," croaked a voice from the couch. All heads turned as Temari raised a clenched fist like a salute—or like a kid in the academy with a question to ask the teacher. "We come from the fortress of winds in the lands of sand. If that's all you need to know, then I would love to get outside. Now. It's nothing against the quarters you've given us, but I'm going to go crazy if I'm locked up in this basement anymore."

The silver-haired elite's single visible eye crinkled in something that Shikamaru could only assume was a smile under his mask, and the Leaf Shadow chuckled. "A forward-speaking young woman. No offense taken, miss. Young master Nara."

"Sir?"

"Take care of your guest if you would. I'm sure her friends would rather take care of her themselves, but I daresay they've been badly weakened by their long stay in the forest." He gave impassive Gaara and seething Kankuro a knowing, grandfatherly smile. "Don't worry, you will be perfectly free to stay with her, wherever she goes with him."

Cursing to himself inside his head, Shikamaru nodded sulkily and hooked his arms under the crook of the woman's leg and her shoulders, hauling her up until he could probably walk for a while without dropping her or breaking his own arms. "You're damn heavy for a starving woman," he muttered at her, and got a fast punch in the ribs in return.

"Just keep walking, Nara. I don't like this any more than you do."

"Yeah, right." Shikamaru kicked the door to the stairs open and looked up at the distant door, already feeling the subtle ache start in his arms and leg. "Right," he repeated, and got a firmer grip, putting one foot up on the first step. "Let's get you outside then, troublesome woman."

"Temari."

"Whatever."

It was thirty-four steps to get from Shikamaru's basement to the surface—he counted it every time he had to climb the staircase, which wasn't often. With friends like Ino and Chouji you always had someone ready to worry about you and bring you food. But at this point all that usually-convenient fact meant was that he was out of shape, and certainly not ready to climb those thirty-four grueling steps with a complaining woman in his arms. Shikamaru groaned to himself and wished for a normal life.

By the time the slow procession reached the top of the stairs Temari was muttering mutinously under her breath and the silver-haired elite had already flickered past him, slouching at the top of the stairs to wait and watch unhelpfully

"You should get out and train more often, Nara-kun," he said as the boy staggered past him, his tone just innocent enough to be easily mistaken for 'honestly helpful'. "You're looking a bit out of breath."

Shikamaru gave him a look that couldn't possibly be taken as polite. As soon as he got out into the street with space to move he dropped Temari's feet, pulling her arm over his shoulder and letting her legs drag on the ground. (…_Like his had, on Ino-Shika-Cho's last mission. The last day and a half of that mission was the comfortingly strong solidarity of Chouji's arm around his shoulder and the feeling of hot blood dripping down his leg_…) The woman staggered and tried to get her feet under her, but she was moving like a sleepwalker and she eventually gave up and slumped, frustrated, on his shoulder.

"You're not looking so good," she murmured, so softly it was barely audible. "Did you…hurt your leg…on the way up?"

"Not important." Shikamaru looked up at the clouds and felt a swell of satisfaction in his chest at the sight, despite the less-than-ideal situation. He always forgot, after a long stretch in his basement, why it was worth coming back out again. "You wanted fresh air, right? Feel better now?"

"Slightly." Temari took a deep breath. "I just wish I could…could get this thing off me. Now you've pointed it out it's like it's… burning me—" she coughed hoarsely. "—just wish I knew what the hell it is. What he put on me. Sick bastard…"

"We've got chakra analyzers," Shikamaru glanced over his shoulder and saw the Leaf Shadow coming gracefully up the steps and the two elites in black scanning the streets. "Just… just keep your troublesome brothers in line, okay? I hope they're used to not acting their stations. Normal people get a bit nervous around nobility."

Temari froze.

"Just keep walking, troublesome mystery-woman." Shikamaru frowned around at the street he was on, going over the map in his head. "The Hokage building's this way."

"You…you…" Temari's hand clenched on his shoulder. "How did you know-" Something stung Shikamaru's cheek and he reached up a hand to his face; there was a thin trickle of blood running down the skin. "Answer me!"

"… I didn't." The genius glanced back again, and saw Gaara's brilliant blue-green eyes fixed on him. Of course. That one would be able to hear me from all the way back there if... "I was making a thing dad used to call 'an educated guess based on situational conjecture'. Really the only word in there that means something is 'guess'. The only situation I can think of where the younger brother gives his brother and sister orders like that is one like the Hyuuga family. An intrafamily caste system. Or…" And this was a state secret, definitely something to not tell people who came from outside, but if there was one thing in the world that could make him interested it was proving one of his own theories. "…or a demon-child. Ow!" A slice the length of his pinky finger splattered blood down his wrist. "Hey, get a hold of yourself, woman! The last thing I need is to lose a finger."

"I'm not doing anything!" If Temari wasn't getting her strength back, she was doing a good imitation of it. Shikamaru's shoulder was starting to hurt. "How. How did you know?"

"Your brother is in charge," Shikamaru the turned the corner and tried to ignore the open stares he was getting from the few people already on the streets. "You train like a shinobi with all your free time. When Gaara's sleeping—" he corrected himself—"meditating, you take turns watching over him in shifts, even though you say you're sure he's safe. Either you aren't sure, or you don't trust me at all, and only people with something really important to protect are that paranoid."

"You...you're going to tell them."

"I dunno." Shikamaru didn't look at her face, but her felt her shift uncomfortably, half-glancing over their shoulders at her brothers. "They can figure it out for themselves. I don't see any reason to tell them your secret...that'd give me too much work."

"Mm." Temari was quiet for a long second, staring down at the street in front of them. Then, very quietly; "…thanks."

"Yeah, yeah." Shikamaru shifted her weight uncomfortably and felt a twinge of pain run all the way from his hip to his ankle, deceptively minor but leaving a deep ache in its wake like a lingering promise of worse to come. Dammit. He half-turned and glanced back at the crowd behind him again, and then stared up the last long, long street between him and the towering Hokage building. "Not far now," he said, half to himself, and took a purposeful step forward, willing his leg not to do anything too troublesome all of a sudden. Three-quarters of a street to go…half…

It was like the muscles had suddenly stopped existing. Shikamaru stopped dead in his tracks as his left leg—the one bearing both his own weight and Temari's—gave a sudden lurch and almost buckled underneath him. He swayed, struggling to stay balanced, and then felt a strong hand on his shoulder and looked up into the single eye of the Hokage's elite.

"I can take her, if you'd like," said the gray-haired man, and even though his voice held nothing but neutral generosity and his face was hidden almost completely by his mask Shikamaru thought he could see understanding in his eye; almost pity. That stung slightly, but his leg was doing more than stinging and the party of important people was coming up fast behind him. He didn't really have a choice.

"Sure," he muttered, and heard Temari make a sudden sound of surprise as the man, apparently not content to merely put an arm around her shoulders to help lifted her bodily into his arms. The sudden absence of her at his side was a welcome relief to his throbbing leg. At the same time though, he couldn't help noticing how much colder the morning seemed to have gotten when there was no longer someone next to him to share body heat with. The man glanced at him one more time, and seemed to see that he could walk on his own now that the burden had been lifted off of him. He nodded once, then fell back to walk with the Hokage's party silently, leaving Shikamaru to walk on ahead toward the Hokage building alone, doing his best not to limp too much.

By the time they got to the huge double doors, his leg had almost stopped aching and he was positive he had his thoughts and his report in order. The rest of the Hokage's men, who had been far behind him when he began walking, had almost caught up with him as he struggled not to hobble like some kind of cripple, and now they clustered around the doors, leaving a respectful isle through their ranks for the Leaf Shadow to pass through.

Shikamaru didn't notice the old man coming up behind him until he coughed gently, and then for a moment he was so surprised by the sight of the compounds mysterious leader waiting patiently for him to move that he took much longer than he usually would have to stumble to one side and let the Shadow through.

He fell back between a tall, sour-faced elder—who glowered at him—and Kankuro, who was glaring at everybody through his single slitted, black eye as though suspecting all of them of harboring plots to murder his (royal, demon-possessed?) brother, his hands twitching out messages to himself. Gaara was harder to find, since he was about the height and weight of a twelve-year-old, but there was no way Kankuro would let him out of his sight…Shikamaru eventually found him standing in his brother's shadow, looking impassive and wary and being supported by another youngish elite whose name Shikamaru didn't know. He'd seen the man around the compound occasionally, on one errand or another, but he always seemed to be more bones than muscle and his wracking cough, heavily shadowed eyes and hollow cheeks always put Shikamaru in mind of a man half dead with some kind of fatal illness. He didn't know what was wrong with the man, but whatever it was it made him uneasy.

Gaara seemed to know that he was being looked at. Moments after the Nara had started to look at him, Gaara looked up suddenly at him as though he had felt the other boy's eyes on him. He met Shikamaru's eyes with his own and held them searchingly for a long second before looking away again. No matter how much of their sign language he cracked, no matter how much he knew about their time in the work camps of 'someone who nobody knew existed', Shikamaru wasn't sure he would ever be able to read that kid.

The Hokage pushed gently at the door with one gnarled hand, and it swung open without the slightest squeak, even though—as far as Shikamaru knew—they hadn't been opened for almost ten years. Inside was a dark expanse of echoing dimness, punctuated occasionally by a ray of light from unseen windows.

"Come along then, everyone," said the Leaf Shadow benevolently, and with a slow, dignified tread he stepped forward and led the way into the innermost recesses of the Shadow Palace.

The hall was a cool, dim place, full of distant, directionless whispers and murmurs. The party's feet seemed to sound very loudly on the stone floor as they walked forward, and Shikamaru, glancing up, saw towering statues lining the hall: the same faces that loomed in the enormous Cliffside that formed the back wall of the Compound. The four Leaf Shadows. They stood, larger than life and stern, between thin, tall windows that let in long slivers of light from the now-rising sun to bounce off of the polished walls and floor. Shikamaru saw Kankuro turn to his brother and hold a finger up to his lips, shushing him ostentatiously, and the slight, worried twitch at the corner of Gaara's mouth before Temari glared at them and they both faced forward again, looking determinedly solemn.

"Now, where are we going first?" The Leaf Shadow asked, and there was a long second of silence before Shikamaru realized that the old man had been addressing him.

"Eh…" he paused for a second, thinking hard. He hadn't been prepared for something like this. Usually the most major decision left up to him was whether to make microwave ramen or microwave soup. "…there's some kind of weird chakra…thing…on the backs of their necks, Lord Hokage. I thought you could get the chakra sensors to take a look at it. That's what's making this one all weak."

"And not the other two?"

Shikamaru opened his mouth, then hesitated, thinking.

"...it was the one on his neck," he said slowly, pointing to Gaara. The boy stood impassively still as all the faces in the crowd turned to him. "-but I touched it. And the woman was the one who...the woman came into contact with me first after that." He tried to shut out the feeling that all the trained experts in the room were listening to him and grading his thought process word by word, meeting the Leaf Shadow's eyes with more confidence than he actually felt. "...I think we should experiment. With their consent. Sir."

Temari's eye had widened on the word 'experiment'-she met his eyes as the echo of the words died away, a frown line between her eyebrows. The Hokage put a hand on Shikamaru's shoulder-he did his best not to jump, but for God's sake, wasn't the leader of the compound supposed to be more formal?-and led him off to one side, leaning in to talk quietly in his ear like a pair of conspirators whispering over a plan. "Consent? You met them a matter of weeks ago. They're 'outsiders'. Explain your wording to me, my boy."

Shikamaru blinked once or twice, and then glanced back at Temari and her brothers, standing close together in a huddle, surrounded by strangers, glaring warily around them. Explain my...? 'It just doesn't feel right' wasn't going to cut it this time, probably. What a pain...

"They...it sounds like they came from somewhere really bad," he said finally, and the Leaf Shadow nodded slowly, encouragingly. "That's why those two are mute, because someone out there is doing experiments on humans. Sir. So if we're promising the people in our compound safety, we shouldn't do experiments on people without their consent." A paragraph of text surfaced in his mind and he added, "…and it says in the ninja handbook that we should try to keep our code of ethics in any situation except wartime. So…so that falls pretty far outside 'ethical'."

"I see." The old man caught his eyes and held them, expressionless, until Shikamaru was struggling to control the urge to pull away. And then, suddenly, his wrinkled face crinkled into a broad, warm, grandfatherly smile. "Very good, Shikamaru. Very good. I'm glad to see that you are not as limited by superstition and fear as my older cabinet members...don't tell them I said so, though."

He patted Shikamaru on the shoulder-he was still trying to come to terms with the fact that the Shadow knew his name, let alone that he had just gained such hearty approval from him-and turned back to the group of Elites. "I agree with the young Master of the Nara clan." Shikamaru winced at the title, then caught the look on Temari's face and winced again. (Damn embarrassing...it wasn't like he asked to be the clan heir.) "We must treat these young men and this woman with the utmost courtesy. We will do nothing without their permission, but we would be honored if they would allow us to unravel the mystery of these paralyzing implants, before they endanger our people or our nation."

It was like the official language had flipped a switch. Gaara's back straightened, his shoulders squaring, and he stepped deliberately out of the shadows of the crowd around him. He looked suddenly years older as he walked forward, his siblings falling in on either side of him, and bowed crisply to the Leaf Shadow with all the grace of a diplomat. Temari was swaying on her feet, but she was standing just as straight-backed as her brother, her hands clenched at her sides.

"Thank you," said the Leaf Shadow politely, and bowed in return. "Lord Wind Shadow."

Shikamaru would normally have nodded in satisfaction at that-it was a nice feeling to have your theories proven, even if he hadn't expected the kid to be quite _that _high up-but thankfully he caught the expression at the last second and feigned shock instead, staring at Gaara's impassive profile in the beams of light from the tall, thin windows. The crowd of elites and councilmen mumbled and muttered, but Lord Hokage just smiled benignly, apparently genuinely pleased to have met the ruler of a country no one else had ever heard of.

"I'm...sorry, sir," said Shikamaru eventually, when it looked like no one else was going to say anything, "...but...didn't you put out a message to the whole village-years ago, like when I was a little kid-that there was nothing outside of the village but dangerous monsters and a lot of trees?"

The Hokage frowned at him. One of the old men shifted uncomfortably and took an inconspicuous step back, vanishing into the crowd, and the old woman who had been whispering with him followed suit. Shikamaru glanced from the place where they had been to the Hokage's face, and pieces clicked into place: the gaunt look to the old man's face, the slowness of his walk and his total absence over the years.

"...you didn't send out that message," he said slowly, and then lowered his voice. "...sir, where have you really been for the past few years?"

"That will have to wait, for now," said the old man gently, and clapped his hands sharply. The sound echoed around the hall and several people jumped. "All of you who have duties, go see to them, please. Shikamaru, Kazekage-sama, and your escorts, please follow me, we'll find you an open facility room. Hayate and Kakashi…"

The unhealthy-looking man with the sunken cheeks stepped forward, as did the silver-haired elite with the lazy eyes. The leaf shadow nodded at them. "…go and get the older gentleman that arrived with them, please. Your father?" He asked, turning to the outsiders.

"Our sensei," Temari said slowly. "…and…our caretaker. Not our father, that's…that was the wind shadow, sir."

"Of course." The Hokage started walking forward again, walking deliberately slowly so that Gaara could walk alongside of him. "Not that heredity is a law, but the titles do tend to run in families. We'll try Miss Haruno's laboratory first, I think…she's one of our most talented analysts, and she's usually available. If that meets with your approval, lord wind shadow."

Gaara gave a stately nod, and Shikamaru wondered briefly to himself whether or not he was really even needed here. The palace was dim and cool, but there was a lingering feeling of damp and age in the air that made the joints in his bad leg ache.

Then they stepped through a side door, and he was suddenly too distracted to wonder anymore.

The hospitals and chakra analysis centers in the center of the compound were famous for being as up-to-date and innovative as humanly possible, but even when he had visited those facilities they had been nothing like this. There were scrolls unrolled on almost every flat surface; the counters and walls and tables that didn't have symbols scrawled on them were covered in chopping boards and mortars and pestles, and the air smelled of herbs and smoke. In the center of it all was a bowed head of pink hair, gathered up into a high, strict bun and fastened with a dangerously sharp jade pin.

The wind shadow cleared his throat softly, and the girl in the center of the mess jolted upright and turned abruptly, staring at them with wide green eyes. She looked bleary-eyed and there was a red spot on her cheek where she had obviously been resting on her hand for quite a while, but she had gone from dozing to battle-ready in a matter of seconds. Sparks of green-blue chakra were already coursing down her arms, mapping out a subcutaneous network of muscles and veins as a dangerous glow built in her clenched fists.

Then she saw who was standing in her doorway and lowered her fists again, looking embarrassed.

"Oh," she said belatedly. "Lord Shadow. I'm sorry, please come in. If…um…if you can."

The Hokage glanced down serenely at the swamp of crumpled papers and miscellaneous junk gathered around his feet and waved a hand in polite dismissal. "No, thank you. I just needed to inform you personally of a new assignment. It's…of a sensitive nature."

Haruno Sakura raised her eyebrows, her eyes flickering from the leader of the compound to the thin boy standing next to him, then said, slowly, "…isn't that…the outsider?"

"…yes," said the leaf shadow fairly, and then cleared his throat again and said "…but to you he should really be 'lord wind shadow'."

"I—oh." Sakura looked for a second like she was going to ask a question, but then she caught Shikamaru's eyes and he shook his head slightly and shrugged. "…okay. Um…welcome to the compound, lord wind shadow. What can I do to serve?"

"Shikamaru," the leaf shadow said, and stepped to one side, waving him forward. "You know more about this than I do. Sakura, do your best to help them find as many answers and heal as many ailments as you can—I'm placing you in care of their general health."

"Yes, sir," Sakura said, looking slightly shell-shocked. Shikamaru didn't blame her—the whole thing was a lot to take in, especially after you'd been asleep for a while. He should know. "I'll…I'll do my best, sir."

"Good." The leaf shadow nodded to her, then bowed to Gaara and his siblings and clapped Shikamaru on the shoulder. "I have some business to take care of, then. I'll take my leave."

There was silence for a while after the old man left, and then Sakura seemed to shake herself awake and turned to the outsiders with a confused, but polite smile. "…I'm…Haruno Sakura, I suppose I'm your general physician now, please treat me kindly." She bowed, and got bows back in return, with varying degrees of politeness, then turned to Shikamaru. "…so, explain this to me, Shikamaru, what the _hell_ is going on?"

"Pretty much what it sounds like," said Shikamaru, and then winced and hurried to clarify as the doctor raised her hand threateningly, her fingertips starting to pool green light. "—they ended up in some kind of refugee camp with a crazy guy who experimented on them and he did something weird and implanted some kind of paralytic…_thing_ into the backs of their necks. That's all I've got. _Women…_"

"Well, come in, I guess," sighed Sakura, and picked her way forward through the mess, picking things up as she went; a pestle stained with something that looked like old blood, a brush the size of Shikamaru's arm, and something that looked like a pair of deer horns from the Nara herd—Shikamaru raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment. His family had known for a long time that their deer's horns had special qualities. "I'll clear some tables. I'd like to do a general exam first, if you want to…" she dithered for a second, then sighed. "Listen, um…lord _Kazekage?_ I appreciate that you must be in a really important position, but if I'm going to work for you three I can't stand on ceremony."

Gaara made a few regal gestures, and Temari translated "…that would be perfectly alright. We're in no position to ask you to—"

One second Shikamaru was upright, the next he was lying on the ground, his head throbbing, with a warm, limp body lying on top of him.

"Oh my god!" Sakura's voice said from somewhere closeby, and several pairs of hands appeared in Shikamaru's vision, pulling Temari's body off of him. Sakura stumbled out of her room and went straight to the girl, pressing a glowing hand to her chest and closing her eyes, and then yelped and pulled her hand away, shaking it as though something had stung it. "Oh, this could be bad, get her inside. Nobody touch me! Shikamaru, get up already, I'm going to need your shadow techniques!"

"Haruno!" He pulled himself up hastily, cursing under his breath as his knee buckled, and staggered into the room. "Hey, making her move when she's unconscious isn't a great idea, my control isn't that great anymore—"

"I don't need you to move her; I need you to keep her still!" Sakura scooped up Temari's unconscious body and threw her easily over one shoulder, swiping scrolls and supplies off of the center table with the other arm and laying the outsider down on it, face down. The little piece of metal gleamed in the lights of the lab, small and innocuous but somehow almost sinister.

"Why would you need to keep her still, she can't even—"

"Would you just do as you're told?" Sakura snapped, and shook her head sharply as Temari's brothers shoved their way closer, both looking worried—almost scared. "—no! You can't touch her, it might spread! The paralysis was just a warning, this is the real reaction. I have less than a minute to—" she pulls a scroll out of the piles and unrolls it, smearing blood across it in almost the same motion and pulling a set of gleaming acupuncture needles out of nowhere in a puff of smoke. "—control this recirculation matrix—" her hands flickered and the needles slid smoothly into Temari's neck, forming a circle around the metal device. "—seal it off before it starts to injure her chakra system—Shikamaru, hold her still!"

He did as he was told, and even as his shadow slid up the side of the table and slipped smoothly into Temari's he felt the first jolt of resistance, tugging at his arms. She would have thrown out a fist—lashed out at whatever was close if he had waited another second. Sakura didn't spare a moment to thank him; she pulled a roll of wire out of nowhere and wove an intricate web between the needles, then tossed the wire aside and rested her fingertips against the tips of the needles.

"Pray this works," she growled, and then there was an explosion of green chakra.

And then there was silence.

* * *

**Ooooo, and I come back and then leave you with another cliffhangar, oooo...sorry about the long, long, long wait, people. I hagve a ton of story plots just hanging around that never get done, so the really longterm projects get kindof pushed to one side. ^_^ I'll try to get some more written and up-rereading the whole thing makes me want to work on it, and so do reviews. *hinthint* :D **

**I kind of know whats going on here, but mostly I'm making this up as I go, so I'm sorry, if there are any mistakes in the plot. I know how some of it goes, though, so I guess I'll keep going in one sort of general direction and hope. In fact, hey, if you guys have suggestions for powers or stuff to happen, go nuts. Can't promise they'l happen, but I would really like to know what you think.  
**


	5. Latrophobia

**Fandom: Naruto**

**Characters: Shikamaru, Temari, Kankuro, Gaara, and a lot of Sakura in this chappy, because she knows what's going on. :D  
**

**Warnings: This story is weird. Sorry.  
**

**Other: I didn't realy mean to, but Naruto is kind of back to his really annoying spazzoid self now like when he was twelve. Sorry! Maybe I'm making excuses, but I think I'd probably be pretty spazzy too if I had all that energy and I was locked up in one city my whole life. So he'll get better when he can go do stuff. ^_^  
**

* * *

There was a moment, after Haruno's chakra faded out of her hands again and she stepped back, where no one seemed to breathe.

Then Temari coughed and the silver-green glow sparking on the needles sank down to a dim glow and died away. A black circle, almost like a tattoo, traced itself on the skin around the device on her neck. Sakura sighed heavily.

"Good," she murmured, and raised her voice. "Miss, don't move for a second. I used acupuncture needles to form a seal on the back of your neck, I need to remove them before you injure yourself."

Temari's face was pressed into the table and she didn't seem to be in good enough shape to say much anyway, but she made a groaning sound that was probably assent. Shikamaru tightened his hold on her shadow anyway, and Kankuro took a sudden step back as their linked shadows shivered a little and darkened, unnaturally dark for the light. He frowned down at his sister's shadow and nudged Gaara's shoulder, and Shikamaru saw them follow it down the side of the table and back-

-and saw the double take at the sight of his face.

"I know," Shikamaru grunted in the face of their stares, and felt a twinge on the back of his neck as the first needle slid out. "Don't like it, don't look at me."

(The first time he'd seen his father like this he'd had nightmares for weeks, and he'd been scared of the dark for months after that. He got over it eventually, but he still didn't like to look at himself in the mirror when he was using a shadow technique. Those pupilless black eyes always seemed to follow him, like even after he turned away from the mirror they would still be there, watching through the glass...)

Shikamaru shook himself awake as the back of his neck stung again, and mentally slapped himself, trying to pull his mind back into the present. Stupid, childish nightmares. There was no point in thinking about them. Kankuro and Gaara were still watching him, but he glared at them and, after a long second of silent eyecontact, they looked back to their sister. Their hands were hidden, but Shikamaru would give good odds that they were talking about him where he couldn't see. Freaking sign language... what a drag.

"Just a few more," said Sakura encouragingly, and Shikamaru could have sworn he saw Temari roll her eyes at her brothers-Gaara's mouth twitched up at one corner. "The seal should hold it just fine, so don't worry."

"Hngh," said Temari, and it was a sign of just how troublesome she was that she managed to make even a noncommittal grunting noise sound sarcastic. Sakura had never been that great at picking up on sarcasm, for all her great grades-too decent of a person, probably. You had to be a little bit of a jerk to be good at being sarcastic, Shikamaru had always thought. That was why Chouji was so bad at it.

The last needle clattered as Sakura dropped it on a tray of well-washed but disorganized medical equipment and she nodded at Shikamaru. He released the shadow bind, feeling his connection to the woman fade away again and the stinging in the back of his neck turn back into the stinging in his hands. Those little cuts that had appeared on his hands when he was carrying her must have been a bit deeper than they looked, they stung like hell.

"Seal," murmured Sakura, her fingers glowing with chakra, and the black mark on Temari's neck seemed to tremble and then settle, encircling the metal device on all sides. Temari shivered and then went still, her eyes falling shut and her breathing deepening and evening, as though she had fallen asleep on the spot. Kankuro shifted uneasily where he was, his shoulders tense, and Sakura held up her hands in a gesture of peace. "-don't worry! She'll just be asleep for a while, while her system repairs itself. The thing didn't get too far, so she shouldn't even sleep for more than a few minutes. Now..." She brushed her bangs out of her face and looked from Kankuro to Gaara. "...I think this is what we've got here. This thing seems to react if you're molding chakra, right? And you're the wind shadow and she's your bodyguard, so she was probably subconsciously getting ready to defend you from a threat, in this case me." She turned her back and reached up to one of her shelves full of scrolls, pulling one down and beckoning the outsiders over. "Come here for a second. You too, Shikamaru, I need to see something."

Gaara hesitated for a second, then nodded and walked forward, Kankuro at his shoulder like a tall, angry shadow. Shikamaru followed them with even less enthusiasm, his arms crossed over his chest. "I don't see why I have to do any of your troublesome tests," he muttered, and shrugged when Sakura raised her eyebrows at him, every line of her expression spelling out an unspoken "...are you really going to complain about _everything?_" "Well, it's not like _I'm _an outsider, and I don't have an-ow."

"Oh, don't be a baby," Sakura snapped, and withdrew the acupuncture needle, letting a glinting drop of Shikamaru's blood land on the blank scroll. "The other three didn't complain, and you're supposed to be a government official."

"One of them is asleep and the other two are mute," Shikamaru grumbled, and wiped his bleeding finger surreptitiously on one of the wide, unrolled bandages lying on a heap on a counter next to him. "Tch...do women just have some kind of fear of explaining themselves or something?"

But Sakura wasn't listening. "Mute? Oh no, I'm sorry-I'll do an examination later, see if there's anything I can do-oh!"

There was a sudden sound of tearing paper; Sakura jumped and looked down at the scroll. In two places, the blood-stained paper had torn open, sliced into fluttering strips. The second splatter of blood didn't seem to have had any effect at all apart from making the paper damp, but where the last splatter had been the paper was slowly dissolving into sandy clay, falling to pieces as Sakura lifted the scroll up.

"Wind, wind, water, earth," she said, and looked up at Shikamaru with a glowing smile. "I was right! I mean, your chakra is a special kind, that's in the records, but you must have an underlying vein of wind—see, Shikamaru, I always told you reading up on theory was a worthwhile—"

"Yeah, yeah," Shikamaru interrupted, and stifled a yawn. Huh. What time was it now, anyway? Probably about the time he'd normally take his mid-afternoon nap. "So?"

"So." Sakura laid out a scroll next to the chakra-sending one, and pulled a brush and a pot of ink from somewhere in the clutter. "…this is how I think it went.

"You touched lord Gaara first." She drew two little stick figures—one with round, ringed raccoon-eyes, the other with a spiky thing protruding from its head that must have been meant to be a ponytail— and labeled it with a meticulous '_step 1'_. "But that didn't set his off, probably because it can sense chakra types and it 'knew' that your chakra was foreign. Then you touched Temari right afterwards and you must have been molding chakra; you jolted her system, and the thing started a paralysis jutsu automatically." Sakura drew a little plain stick figure lying prone on the ground, considered it for a second, then scribbled the kanji for 'wind' hastily onto its face. "And then…Shikamaru, I saw you scratching at those the whole time. They burn, right?"

Shikamaru looked down and realized suddenly that he really was scratching—there was blood under his fingernails, and several of the gashes had torn open again. "—uh…yeah."

Sakura gesture imperiously. Shikamaru sighed and rolled his eyes, but approached her seat and held out his injured hands for inspection.

Sakura had barely touched them when her eyes widened and she laughed victoriously. Shikamaru was about to ask what the hell was going on when her hands suddenly glowed and the burning faded away immediately, the cuts melting out of existence as though they had never been there.

"Thanks," said Shikamaru slowly, "…but those would've healed on their own, y'know—"

"Mm." Sakura shook her head sharply, waving a finger in the air as though to chastise him for being so foolish. "No, actually, they wouldn't! Because my theory is right, _ha_!" She looked up and saw Gaara and Kankuro staring at her, and coughed uncomfortably. "—anyway. These weren't just any cuts, Shikamaru. Because these…" she reached down and took Temari's hand gently in her own, uncurling the stiff fingers slowly. "…came from miss Temari."

Shikamaru leaned over the outsider's still body and peered at the palm of the hand Sakura was holding.

"…that's your proof," he said finally. "…three little circles."

"Oh for heaven's sake, have you never been to a play?" Sakura snapped, and turned around, fumbling in one of her piles of junk and coming out with a thick album of photos. "Here," she snapped, and flipped through the album until she found what she was looking for, slamming the book down on the table in front of him. "The Leaf Compound artistic community thanks you for your complete _lack_ of artistic patriotism, Shikamaru."

Gaara and Kankuro stepped closer and Shikamaru glanced uncomfortably over his shoulders as they leaned over him—but it wasn't like they were hurting anything, no matter how annoying it was trying to read with someone looking over your shoulders at it, and Sakura would probably kill him if he insulted a dignitary in her office. And anyway—

—Kankuro was pointing.

"_Haah_," breathed a harsh voice behind him, and Shikamaru peered at the place the outsider was pointing to. It was a blurry photo; a woman in a heavy, troublesome-looking kimono and thick makeup, her hair up in four smooth, black buns. She looked like she might have been in the middle of the dance when the picture was taken, with a tasseled fan in either hand. And on the fans—

"Those are called the 'three stars', and they're the theatre symbol for a legendary…oh, what's the word…? '_Kamaitachi_'," said Sakura superiorly, and leaned down to take the album back. "No one really knows where that set of legends comes from, but there are hundreds of them in the vaults of the theatres. The biggest section of anonymously authored plays they have—oh. Did you…um…want this, then?"

When Sakura had moved to pick up the album off the table, another hand had closed on it as well—Kankuro gave her a long look and pulled a little bit, quirking the corner of his mouth up into an unreadable little smirk.

"…o-okay," Sakura said slowly, and let go—Gaara shook his head, smiling faintly, as his brother took the book and began flipping quickly back to the beginning, scanning the pages with more obvious interest than Shikamaru had ever seen him show. "—well…well anyway. I think miss Temari must have a technique that combines her chakra and the air around her, and makes it into a weapon—and an extremely dangerous one, too. Those injuries on your hands would have taken _months_ to heal, and if you had just let them close on their own there's no telling how much damage might have been done to your chakra system. Less than usual, I think, since you have a little bit of wind chakra in you, but still…I don't know if I could have fixed it. The wind blades that made those cuts were _packed_ with chakra. Which brings me on to my next point…"

A little ponytail stick figure, holding the 'wind' figure in its arms—Shikamaru rolled his eyes and thanked the lord the troublesome woman was still asleep. Gaara was doing the look again where he was definitely smiling inside but it didn't show on his face, he could feel it on the back of his neck.

"…you brought her out into the open air, Shikamaru," Sakura said distantly, and drew a few quick little spirals in the space around the figures with a flourish. "The excess chakra that was bouncing around in her system, aggravating the paralysis mechanism, could be released once it had moving air to combine with. She was getting better and better…" she drew in another figure, this one with her own bun and scribbled-in bangs, and sat back, looking satisfied. "…until she forgot where she was and tried to mold chakra for lord Gaara's protection. And that's why she's here now."

There was a long silence.

Shikamaru yawned.

Sakura swatted him casually in the side of the head so hard he almost fell out of his seat and then turned to Gaara, smiling her diplomatic smile.

"I think I've figured out how these devices work, lord Kazekage—your sister is out of the woods for now, as long as she doesn't try to mold any more chakra until I get a good look at the mechanics of one of these."

Gaara nodded slowly, considering this new with a blank, professional air. Then his nonexistent eyebrows contracted and he signed something quickly, worried.

Sakura stared at him, and Gaara glanced down at Temari and frowned. Of course, Shikamaru realized; it didn't matter whether the brothers were paralyzed or not. Without a translator, they might as well have been unable to speak their sign language at all.

…well…

"…I know a little bit," he said, and Gaara looked up at him, surprised. "Your sign language, I mean. If you use the one all three of you use and talk slowly, I might be able to get it. No promises. Just shake your head or something if I'm wrong."

Gaara nodded gratefully and turned to him, holding his hands up where they were clearly visible and making slow, clear motions. Shikamaru stared at his hands, and Sakura watched as well, her eyes wide with incomprehension.

"…we…time…hold…" Shikamaru frowned and shook his head. "No, wait. 'Do we have much time', right?"

Gaara hesitated, then shrugged and waved his hand in the air in a way that clearly implied, '…_well, more or less'_.

"Much time till…?" Sakura glanced down at Temari, lying prone on her table. Her mouth tightened. "…no. Not more than a few hours, probably. But I don't need much time, either. I should have this thing undone in less than half an hour. I…well, I got top marks at the academy."

Gaara somehow contrived to like politely impressed for a moment, and then glanced back over his shoulder at Kankuro, signing something.

Kankuro wasn't paying attention. He had stopped flipping through the pages and was looking down at the page he was on with a look on his face Shikamaru wasn't completely sure he could analyze. He could see anger in his face, but there was also something like happiness or relief, and a definite note of regret and sadness that piqued Shikamaru's curiosity at once. What could an outsider find in a Leaf Compound record book that would make him regretful?

Gaara put a hand on the book and pulled it down, signing something, and Kankuro's eyes sharpened, his face immediately hardening back to its normal mask-like expression of general discontent. He too glanced at Temari, and put the book down slowly, his fingers trailing across a photograph for just a second too long. Shikamaru glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and saw a tall, thin man in a mess of props and painted backgrounds that must have been backstage of a show; he was wearing pure black, holding a black hood in his hands, holding a scroll in his hands with the kanji for 'ten' inked elegantly on its binding.

'_The Ten Puppets,_' said the carefully-inked label under the picture. '_fragmented work. Cancelled due to lack of content information._'

…well that didn't make any sense, then.

Shikamaru stored the information and the picture away in his mind for later analysis and watched the brothers 'talking', still absorbing and translating mentally as much as he possibly could from context. They seemed to be arguing again, but not as violently as they had before. Gaara especially looked like he was barely bothering to argue at all—like when Shikamaru's old man argued against having people he didn't like over. Nevertheless he put up an unenthusiastic fight for several second before Kankuro shook his head and dropped a heavy, calloused hand on his head. He ruffled the boy's shaved hair once, then stepped back and turned his back to Sakura, tipping his head forward to bare the metal device implanted in his skin, just above the high collar of his shirt.

"I think he wants you to use his for your experiments," Shikamaru told Sakura, who had been watching the whole exchange with a look of nervous incomprehension on her face. She stared at him, then raised her voice and stood on her tiptoes to look over his shoulder.

"—was that what you wanted?"

Kankuro nodded, still facing away. Sakura raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth to say something, then caught Gaara's gaze, closed it again and nodded.

"Okay. Okay, well then…here, sit up on this other table." Another swipe of her hand and away went the chakra-nature transformation scroll and the once-blank scroll now graffitied with doodles of stick figures, into a new pile of random objects. No wonder the room was such a mess, if this was what she always did when she needed a flat surface. "I'm going to do an overall examination first and I'll make sure it's not invasive so you don't have to worry about your device-thing reacting…I just need to make sure there's no unexpected surprises while I do this. Now, I know it's awkward but can you—oh. I guess you've done this before, then."

Kankuro dropped his shirt on the table next to him and bent his head forward again, the gleaming metal implanted in the back of his neck contrasting sharply with the dark, hourglass-shaped tattoo a few inches below it. Sakura winced at the sight of the protruding vertebrae and the clear shape of his ribs under his skin, then rubbed her hands together, gathering chakra in her palms, and laid them gently against the outsider's back, closing her eyes.

"Malnourishment," she murmured immediately, and a spider-web network of green-blue light coursed over Kankuro's skin for a second, following the invisible lines of his chakra system. "—that's to be expected, of course—your heartbeat is a little bit erratic, but that's not very surprising either, considering how low your blood-pressure is. Chakra system…neglected, but perfectly sound overall. And as for these little things…I think I get it."

She cocked her head to one side as though she was listening to something only she could hear, then smirked a singularly evil smirk that made Shikamaru's skin prickle and said, softly, "…_got you._"

"Figured it out then?"

Sakura jumped at the sound of his voice and opened her eyes for a second, staring at him. "Hm? Oh! Yes. It's not exactly complicated. It didn't have to be, when he could implant it like this—it's just like the chakra cuffs your division uses. The only thing he's changed is the size of them. After all, if I—huh."

Sakura paused for a second, her eyes still closed, and then moved her hand up to the back of his neck, pressing her fingers to the sides of his throat. She shivered and pulled her hands away quickly, opening her eyes again and scrubbing her hands on the worn black fabric of her pants."—that's the strangest thing I have ever felt. I don't like that at all." She hesitated for a second, then asked, hesitantly, "…was that…one of his experiments…?"

Kankuro shrugged, his mouth twisted up in a kind of bitter frown, and Sakura seemed to notice immediately that she had strayed into territory where she wasn't welcome. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, and Kankuro shrugged again—he met Gaara's eyes for a split second, then looked away again, his good eye hooded and dark.

Sakura opened her mouth once, then shut it again and sighed. "…if I could…but, well, of course, I'm not—" and then she stopped suddenly, and her entire demeanor changed. Shikamaru felt some of the weight go out of the atmosphere and almost sighed aloud at the loss of the tension. Thank the lord for Sakura's resilient personality, no matter how troublesome she used to be in school. "—oh, wait a minute…!" And she dived back into her stacks, digging through them. "I have something here…ah, here it is!"

She pulled out another scroll and handed it to Kankuro, looking pleased. He stared at her, then unrolled the scroll and gave it a cursory glance.

'_what is it?'_ Gaara signed immediately, as his brother's eyebrows slowly rose. '_what is it_—' and then another sign Shikamaru didn't know—although he supposed it was pretty likely that little twisting, tugging motion was Kankuro's name.

The reply was one he knew, at least. _'The hell if I know_', Kankuro signed back, and looked up at Sakura, looking distinctly displeased, as though he suspected her of handing him an incomprehensible scroll on purpose.

Either Sakura mistook his confusion for shock or she was just on a roll today, because she took the scroll back and held it up for Gaara to see, pointing to the diagrams rendered minutely on it and explaining something very, very quickly about chakra storage and cell division and power focus and seals and tissue regrowth—

"—wait," Shikamaru said suddenly, and Sakura stopped and gave him a brightly inquisitive look, like she didn't even understand why he would stop her. Troublesome A-grade students… "…are you saying…if you pack enough chakra into this seal you can _regrow_ the bits of his throat that are missing?"

"Yes!" Sakura said cheerfully, and she pointed to another picture near the end of the scroll; a woman with blond bangs hanging in her eyes, looking out of the photo with a sort of petulant annoyance, her cheeks flushed with something that looked an awful lot like drunkenness. "See that little diamond on her forehead? That's the legendary Tsunade-sama, the greatest medic that ever lived! She figured out this seal and left it in our records, it's just that…well…it's a little tricky to use. But the theory ought to be fine."

_So why couldn't you fix…_

"…What's…a'matter with you, N…nara?"

Shikamaru jumped and realized suddenly he had slumped back to sit on a tottering stack of books, staring at the ground. His left hand was clenched on his thigh, fingers digging in painfully, the line of his scars faintly tangible under his palm even through the fabric of his pants.

And Temari was awake.

They blinked at each other for a second, and then Shikamaru said, "…I don't know what the hell you're talking about, troublesome woman," and the moment was over.

"…look like death," Temari growled, and rolled over a little onto her side, looking blearily at her brothers. "…why's Kankuro got his shirt off?"

"Medical exam," said Sakura brightly, and Temari nodded slowly, looking her up and down.

"…you just said…you can _fix_ him…?"

Sakura nodded, and Temari rolled back onto her stomach and laid her head back down, turning her face away.

"…thank you," she said quietly, and then fell silent—not sobbing, not even trembling, just quiet. Gaara started to step forward as though to reach for her but Kankuro reached out and caught him by the shoulder—shook his head minutely and gave him a long look that said more than signs ever could. Gaara held that gaze for a minute, and then glanced at Temari and stepped back again.

"Um…"

All heads turned back to Sakura. Temari stayed where she was a second longer, then took a deep breath and levered herself up again, sitting up to give Sakura her full attention. Her eyes were completely dry and there wasn't even the slightest sign of redness or swelling around them…god, did the troublesome woman have to be so _tough_ about everything?

"That's not the only good news," Sakura said, and she picked up Kankuro's shirt, handing it to him as she came around the table and headed confidently towards the door. "Follow me. We're going to get you your chakra back."

* * *

The streets were much fuller than they had been when Shikamaru had led the Leaf Shadow's party down it, but still nowhere near bustling. Shikamaru and Sakura waved and called back to familiar voices and faces as they threaded their way down the streets towards the back of the city and the deserted area by the cliff face. The outsiders trailed behind them, as inconspicuous as possible in their plain, dark clothes, looking around the compound with apparent interest as Sakura explained her plan.

It was simple enough; the chakra devices worked on a simple basis of receive, amplify, and return. When chakra was molded it was sucked right into the metal, stored, charged, and returned, sending a painful jolt through the chakra system of the person it was attached to. The idea had been some Hyuuga's long ago, apparently.

"You were kept in bad conditions purposely, probably by someone trained as a medic," Sakura explained, and for a second her eyes promised death and destruction to whoever had dared to do such a thing with their medical knowledge. "—they kept you healthy enough to be stable but the lack of nourishment and the expenditure of energy meant that you couldn't replenish your chakra supplies. You couldn't even return them to their normal levels, let alone store up and mold enough to break these things, but now that you're here we just need to flood your systems with a sudden, huge surge of chakra and they'll overload immediately. You're in luck, actually; since these are so small, we should only need one stronger-than-average store of chakra for each of you."

"And there won't be any side effects?" Temari ducked under someone's hanging washing, then barely looked down in time to avoid tripping over one of the many tree roots that protruded from into the edges of the streets. "Dammit! Does nobody clean up the streets around here?"

"We're the _Leaf_ Compound, woman," Shikamaru sniped back, feeling another little stab at his (admittedly negligible) nationalistic pride. "We don't chop up tree roots. We're just capable of looking where we're going."

"No, there shouldn't be any side effects." Sakura hopped over another tree root, not even needing to look—every journeyman ninja in the village could walk this path in their sleep, including every tree root and dip in the cobbles. "Especially not if we play it safe and get one for each of you. Two might be too much, though…we don't want to flood your chakra systems with your chakra _and_ someone else's. They might go haywire, and _ninjutsu_ out of control isn't pretty."

"_Ninjutsu_," Temari mumbled, repeating the word to herself. "_…secret techniques..._'ninjutsu'."

"Why, what did you call them?" Shikamaru muttered back as Sakura walked ahead, keeping a watchful eye over Gaara and Kankuro—Gaara had walked for almost the entire length of the village, apparently on willpower alone, before his muscles, still undernourished and overworked, gave out under him. Kankuro had immediately grabbed his brother's arm and now Temari and Sakura watched both of them like a pair of scary hawk-women, looking for the slightest sign of more weakness.

"Just 'techniques' usually," said Temari, her eyes never leaving her brothers. "But the kids in the academy started calling them 'Forces' while I was there. You have…'_ninja'_ with '_ninjutsu_'—we had enforcers with 'forces'." She snorted. "—never called them that. The other kids at the academy were morons."

Shikamaru laughed, then stopped abruptly as Temari gave him a surprised look. "—what, woman?"

"You can _laugh_?"

"Oh, shut up."

"What, seriously?"

"Troublesome."

"Mister gloomy shadow man can actually _laugh_?"

"This is why I'm never going to get married…"

"No, you're never going to get married because you're a gloomy shadow man," Temari laughed, and punched him on the shoulder, much harder than Shikamaru thought was strictly necessary. "Maybe if you find someone deaf, so she can't hear your endless _whining_."

"You—"

"Hey, it's Shikamaru! And—oh! HEY SAKURA, HEEEYYY!"

"_Ah_." Sakura sighed heavily, massaging her temples. "…_just the man I needed_…Naruto! Naruto, come down, I need to talk to you!"

"_Really_?"

There was a rustle of leaves and then a figure came crashing out of the tree over them, at least thirty feet in the air. There was a yell that got rapidly louder and closer and then a loud _thud_ and Uzumaki Naruto landed on all fours in front of them in a cloud of dust, leaves and broken twigs.

"Sakura, you never come out here to train anymore!" Naruto sprang up, grinning his perfect, white-toothed grin, his arms spread wide in excitement and welcome. "Hey, hey! Whoa…!" He stared at Gaara, Kankuro and Temari, his eyes almost round. "It's the outsiders! Whoa! That's so cool! Hey are they monsters then? They don't look like monsters. My name's Uzumaki Naruto!"

Gaara blinked at him, and then, tentatively, raised the corners of his mouth in one of his uncertain smiles. Naruto laughed and grabbed his hand, shaking it enthusiastically and Gaara shook his head as Kankuro moved to step between them.

'_it's fine, Kankuro,'_ one hand signed—a little shakily as Naruto pumped the other one up and down in wholehearted welcome. '_I'm fine._'

And then Naruto slammed face-first into the ground.

Sakura lowered her fist, her eyes burning with disapproval, as Naruto pried himself up off the ground and Gaara stared at them, looking shocked.

"Naruto, you _idiot_! He's a visiting dignitary, you're supposed to bow, _bow_!"

Naruto staggered upright again and shook the dirt off his coat, looking chagrined; he looked Gaara up and down, squinting.

"…he doesn't look like one," he said finally, and then cringed a little as Sakura raised a threatening fist. "—okay, okay! Sorry, man." He bowed sloppily and Gaara bowed as well, blank-faced except for the twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Hey, hey! Why are they all here, then? This is, like, the training grounds."

"That's why I'm here," Sakura said sternly, "—if you would just _listen_, you would know that. These guys have these devices attached to them that's locking their chakra, we need someone to run their chakra through at full strength to fix it—Naruto, no!"

But it was too late because Naruto had already reached out with a loud "—oh, is that all? Okay!" And grabbed Temari and Kankuro, pulling Gaara in with them and holding them there tight as the ground under him splintered and cracked and chakra filled the air like fire.

* * *

**Hm. This one cliffhangered a little bit like the last one did, huh? Good news, I have a plan now, so I can keep writing pretty fast. I wrote a plan for this part and then I wrote 4500 words in one big dash, so woohoo! :D Naruto is a little bit dumb, but he's a lot of funt o write. And hey! He finally met Gaara which was destined to happen, right?**

**Okay so, about pairings:  
**

**If you don't like pairings there aren't any pairings, if you do like pairings then there they are and you can enjoy them all you want, okay? I don't think I'll do anything really romantic with this story because I want to keep it good for everybody, so if ShikaTem makes you mad (sorry, that's probably where the whole things going to kind of end up, but nothing really really shippy) you can just think of them as becoming really good friends. That's the for-now plan, anyway. If I change my mind I'll tell you guys in the notes on the beginning and you can flame me all you want, okay? :D  
**

**Thank you for the reviews, it was actually a review that made me think about this story today and start writing, so thanks alot! I love everyone of them.  
**

** -MFS  
**


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